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Over in D&D 3.5e Races of Stone gives us the feat "Fling Ally" for the fans of the Fastball Special, which lets you hurl an ally smaller than you as though that ally was a ranged weapon with an incredibly terrible range. The Epic Level Hand book has Distant Shot, an epic level feat that lets you perform the epic level task of throwing or firing a ranged weapon against any target within line of sight. On a clear night, you should have line of sight to the moon. With magical protection and maybe someone who doesn't need to breathe like a construct, undead, or adventurer with the right equipment, an epic-level fighter can start the space program. Given that the projectile hits the target within a round (six seconds), the fighter is throwing things at some significant percentage of the speed of light. Except, well... the problem with line of sight is that checks made to Spot something take a -1 penalty per 10 feet of distance. Given that our moon is somewhere around 1.2 to 1.3 billion feet away, you're looking at a 120 million penalty to your check. But wait, the moon is pretty big. Things take a penalty to their checks to hide based on how big they are. The Tarrasque, as a 50 foot tall killing machine, takes a -16 penalty to its checks to hide (and thus is incredibly difficult for your average commoner to spot if it's standing on the other end of a football field). The epic rules have options for creatures larger than colossal, which basically dictate that every time its size doubles, it moves up another category. 64 feet (2^6) is the bottom for Colossal, providing a (-8) 2^3 size penalty. The moon is 2159 miles wide, roughly 11.4 million feet. 8.3 million feet is around 2^23, which means the moon is somewhere around Colossal+17, and takes a 2^20 size penalty, multiplied by 4 to offset your spot check (2^22, or roughly 4 million). You take a -120 million penalty to spot the moon, offset by a 4 million bonus because the moon is big. Unless I screwed up by a factor of 64, you probably can't see the moon. The sun is roughly 400 times larger, but also roughly 400 times farther away, so no luck there. Other stars may range from the sun's size to 1500 times larger, but they're also 250,000 times farther away at minimum. The skies above Greyhawk are black and empty. None have ever seen the stars.
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Feb 13, 2013 00:09
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Ratpick posted:Incidentally, that's also where Monte Cook has been hiding all this time. This goes down the other way too in 3.5e. Any knowledge with a DC 10 is considered to be "common knowledge" and thus you can make checks to figure it out without any ranks in the knowledge skill. As you said, the DC to identify a creature is 10 + its Hit Dice, and since every creature rounds to at least one hit die, the minimum DC to identify something is DC 11, meaning it's not common knowledge. Thus, you cannot identify a dog or a human being without having ranks in knowledge skills. And knowledge skills are cross-class for commoners. Even if a commoner decides that he or she is going to know the poo poo out of things and pumps 4 skill points into a cross-class skill to get a +2 to the check (or maybe +3 if this commoner is extremely intelligent), you're still looking at a 30% to 40% chance of failure. And if you fail a knowledge check, you can't try again until you level up. It could be years, assuming a commoner ever gains a level. If you tell a commoner that you're an elf, the commoner has no real way to verify or discredit your claim. Hell, if you tell the commoner that the commoner is an elf, the commoner has no real way to verify or discredit your claim. Life as a commoner is a haze of uncertainty and second-hand knowledge. Now you know why there are so many half-breeds. Speak of offspring, it's maybe a DC 15 check to tell that a baby dragon breathes fire or whatever and is immune to the same element- a check that can be made by a 1st level character with reasonable intelligence and some training in the skill. But it's a DC 30 check to figure out that the dragon's parents also breathe fire and are immune to the same element- you're going to need a sage to figure this one out. Similarly, it's a DC 11 check to identify a dirt farmer, and a DC 30 check to identify a legendary hero. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Feb 13, 2013 |
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Feb 13, 2013 00:55
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Piell posted:In D&D 3.5 it costs 1800 gp to dig a 10 foot deep pit and cover it in sticks. Or a third of that cost in raw materials if you're going to build it yourself. It requires some premium dirt and sticks. Assuming you're a hero the likes of which the world has never seen who has devoted every fiber of your being to trap-making and rolls nothing but natural 20s in the process of making it, it'll take you about two weeks to build it. If you're some dirt farmer? Average results around maybe half a year. This is because 3.5e tracks progress in crafting in silver pieces (equal to ten times the final target's cost in gold), where you multiply your skill check result by the target difficulty number, and make one check a day until you finish it up. While this may be fine for cheap adventuring gear, it goes bananas once you start dealing with items that are in the hundreds or thousands of gold pieces in value, since you're going to be chipping away at the target for weeks even with an awesome skill (and given two items of equal value, the one that's easier to make will take longer to make). Of course, if you're a 9th level wizard with a pile of sticks and dirt, you can finish this up inside of six seconds.
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Feb 13, 2013 01:11
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In D&D 3e and its offspring, they decided to better define various game status conditions to make the game more readable, modular and understandable. So, it'll explain that a character who is dazed, nauseated, or stunned will be unable to act and vulnerable to enemies, while one who is paralyzed will be even easier prey. But while those conditions explicitly say that you aren't able to take actions, but take a look at characters who are unconscious or dead. The dead are missing their souls and can't heal, but there are no rules that say that they can't act. Even if you assume the "knocked out" part of unconscious implies that you can't take physical actions, there's nothing stopping you from taking mental actions while unconscious, and you can be hit with the "dead" status effect without ever being unconscious first. So if a character is hit by Finger of Death or an assassin's death attack, you can still wander around and do your thing just without being able to heal up from anything.
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Feb 13, 2013 01:50
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3.5e has the Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords, a book designed to give fighting characters more awesome abilities divided amongst nine different schools of battle. One of these schools is Iron Heart, focusing on determination and weaponskill to achieve almost supernatural things. One of those maneuvers is Iron Heart Surge. Tome of Battle posted:Iron Heart Surge There are lots of things you can use this maneuver for. Iron Heart Surge your way out of a debilitating spell, or maybe shake off a disease or poison. But what is an effect? Can you use Iron Heart Surge to end hunger or thirst? What about the infirmity of old age? Or poverty? And it says that "that effect ends" not "that effect ends for you", so if you use it to shake off a spell cast on your whole group, it ends the spell entirely for everyone, not just relieving them of the effect for a round. Well, Drow and Orcs are blinded by bright light, and dazzled if they linger in it. So if a drow in daylight uses Iron Heart Surge... daylight ends immediately.
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Feb 13, 2013 02:06
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The Tri-Stat system published by Guardians of Order before they went out of business and used in Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) before going for a failed attempt at a universal system had some similar gimmicks where things went up by a factor of ten with ranks for many of them, or by factors of two or five for others, except they weren't super keen on setting caps for the number of points you could dump into things. Compounding issues was the fact that some ability you could put points in would create a pool of points you could use to buy abilities at a rate larger than the number of points you were dumping into the ability. Giant robots paid out at something like a four or five to one rate, under the assumption that a large clunky robot would be hard to use all the time, except you could take some of those extra points and use them to turn it into a skintight suit of power armor. Oh, and there were rules for mini-mecha where you spent points to get robot buddies each at a tenth of the value of your big robot, and at level six you could get 50 of them. Those mini mechs could spend points on being able to merge, combining into a mecha valued at the sum of their points. So you could get a mecha five times more powerful than you were which you could ride around in, using your mecha suit. Recursive point-dumps were ridiculous. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Feb 13, 2013 |
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Feb 13, 2013 02:50
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darthbob88 posted:The Jumplomancer. I think you can actually do that with any skill; persuade people to follow you based on a Hide/Move Silently/Disguise check("I don't know who that is, I can't see him or hear him, but I'll follow him anywhere"), Knowledge(Religion)("..And that's why Pelor's the best god.""No, you're the best god! All hail Dudebro!") or any of a dozen other skills. I saw one that relied on an Alphorn and the Perform skill. I think you drop the bonus for using a masterwork instrument, but it hits everybody for 1d10 miles. "I don't know who that is blatting away up on the mountain, but I'll lay down my life for him." There's some funny things when you screw around with distances and scales. For example: the bard. Many people mock bards. Those people are fools. One of the bard's most basic abilities is Inspire Courage, which lets the bard perform to grant a bonus to attack and weapon damage rolls, as well as bonuses to defend themselves against attacks that charm or frighten them. This bonus is granted to all allies who can hear the performance, and scales with the bard's level, capping out at +4 for a 20th level bard. Not too shabby. Except for the fact that 3e never does anything by halves, so there's a pile of things that boost Inspire Courage. The Song of the Heart feat from the Eberron Campaign Setting boosts all of your bard effects by one. The Inspirational Boost spell from Spell Compendium boosts Inspire Courage by one. The Badge of Valor from the Magic Item Compendium also boosts Inspire Courage by one. Vest of Legends from the Dungeon Master's Guide II lets you function as a bard five levels higher. The Words of Creation feat from the Book of Exalted Deeds just *doubles* your bonus. Where that multiplier comes in is kind of uncertain, with conservative estimates just multiplying your class bonus, while others argue that it should hit everything else. It comes at the cost of 3d4 nonlethal damage per round, but if you're immune to nonlethal damage by being a warforged or something, you can jam with the angels all day. Fire it all up and you're looking at somewhere between +11 and +14 to hit and damage on every attack, which is enough to allow your party to punch way above its weight class thanks to increased accuracy while hitting like a truck in the process. Multiattackers love you because that bonus applies to every attack they make in a round, while even single attackers can profit by dumping that attack bonus via Power Attack. If you prefer damage over accuracy, Dragonfire Inspiration from Dragon Magic lets you replace your +11 to hit and damage with +11d6 fire damage per hit, letting each attack hit with the force of a fireball. If you've got the right feats, you can add sonic damage instead, and Spell Compendium gives the creaking cacophony spell to make all enemies in range take +50% sonic damage. There's nothing stopping you from doing both either if you want attack and damage, using either two bards or a bard and a harmonizing weapon (Magic Item Compendium). But why stop there? The bonus applies to you and any allies who can hear you sing. There's the aforementioned alphorn for an audience that can hear you for miles, but even if that doesn't fly with your DM, there's the resounding voice spell in Heroes of Battle that lets you be heard for 100 feet per caster level. Have your cleric buddy cast a properly metamagiced version and you can basically sing for miles all day. Fortunately, even if your allies and enemies are out of sight but within earshot, there's no risk of your enemies getting hopped up on your sweet jams. +11 to hit and damage kicks the balance around in a party of adventurers, but it completely rocks the boat when you start throwing it on a pile of weak creatures such as peasants. A proper inspiration will let someone's grandma one-punch an orc warrior- throw it on something actually dangerous and you will see results. In one corner, we have the Mongol Horde, bent on pillaging the city. In the other? Two bards, and every housecat they villagers could find. Confident of their victory, the horde charges, only for the bards to begin to rock out. And a thousand cats burst into flames, descending onto the horde in a crowd of feline fury, slaying horse and rider with a single blow each. Bards are a ridiculous large-scale force multiplier. Fear them.
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Feb 13, 2013 04:42
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Ratpick posted:Actually, there is one way, which was discovered by 4chan's /tg/ some time ago. Basically, take the Crane Deflect feat, which allows you to take an attack of opportunity against an enemy that attacks you. Going prone is a free action, and there's a rogue talent that also lets you stand as a free action. Basically, bounce up and down off the ground an infinite number of times in a turn. And since it's a free action, you can basically hit the deck any time you want, then pop back up as a free action. You still have to deal with provoking attacks of opportunity, but if no one is threatening you it's basically a free +4 to AC against ranged weapons. And it's a great way to impress people at parties by doing the worm. Still trying to figure out what happens if you strap magnets to yourself- can you become a human generator who provides all the world's power in an instant?
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Feb 14, 2013 02:41
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Captain Walker posted:
Yeah, in D&D 4e they clarified it to basically state that things that weren't a threat didn't count for the purposes of triggering powers. Downside is that it made it harder to use attack powers to cheese the game, upside is that it diminished the number of restrictions on a few things. Enter the Thief of Legends epic destiny (for characters of level 21+), whose level 26 utility power gives you the ability to swipe any unattended object. An object is pretty much anything that isn't a creature, and thanks to the Bag O' Rats principle, you can't argue that little things like rats or bugs or something on the object count as it being attended. Put those two together and you can pretty probably steal buildings if you can empty them first. The Epic Destiny also comes with the Steal Back the Soul ability, which explicitly allows you to steal intangible concepts when you mug someone. It is arguable that divinity or a god's portfolio are perfectly valid targets. Thief of Legend is pretty much Epic Destiny: Carmen Sandiego and is probably my favorite epic destiny in the game. Other silly epic trick involves the Shaman from the Player's Handbook II. One of its level 22 utility powers is "Call the Dead", a daily power that allows all dead allies within five squares to spend a healing surge and return to life. From a player character perspective, it's not that hot because epic level characters are pretty hard to put down and if you need to bring two or more allies back from the dead something has gone horribly wrong. But unlike other revival abilities, this has one key difference- no maximum time limit for how long your target can be dead. So you can bring back anyone who happened to die in the area. True, most mortals don't have healing surges to spend, and thus might not be able to use this power depending on how your DM interprets what healing powers do when you're out of surges- but the Cleric has the epic level feat Shared Healing, which states that whenever you use a healing power that requires a surge expenditure, the target can benefit from it while you or another ally within five squares can spend the surge in place of the target. Throw that on a shaman, or the shaman power on a cleric, or some other combination, and if you have a pile of allies with huge healing surge totals (paladins come to mind) you can wander into a mausoleum and revive folks who have been dead for centuries. Take the Loremaster Epic Destiny that shows up in the PHB 2 and you can turn "Call the Dead" into an encounter power, meaning you can revive the dead every five minutes as long as your surge batteries hold up. So an epic level healer and friends can roam the earth pulling off the Lazarus routine everywhere they go.
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Feb 18, 2013 06:04
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Back to the D&D 3.X and its offspring, we have How To Get By (With A Little Help From Your Furry Friends). So, there's a long-established story tradition of braving the odds with an animal at your side whose courage and devotion are the stuff of legends. Be it atop a noble steed or alongside a noble dog, D&D 3e has lots of ways for you to get in touch with your wild side. The druid would be the poster child for this sort of thing, as this flower child comes with its own animal companion starting from level 1. As the druid grows in levels, the animal companion gains strength, toughness, and the ability to dodge area attacks, or the druid can upgrade from a starting companion such as a wolf to a larger companion such as a bear, elephant, or even a T-Rex. A starting druid can choose from the following creatures: badger, camel, dire rat, dog, riding dog, eagle, hawk, horse, owl, pony, snake, or wolf (in addition to octopi, porpoises or sharks for aquatic campaigns). Upon looking at this list, many players might think "hmm... many of these creatures are either mounts or small animals. The most obvious choice for a druid would be to harness the killing power of the predator who has been a source of countless stories, the noble wolf." They'd be wrong.  About this wrong, in fact Enter the riding dog, designed to be used as a mount by smaller races such as halflings and gnomes.  Cry Havoc SRD posted:This category includes working breeds such as collies, huskies, and St. Bernards. Compared to a wolf, the riding dog is slower, but flat-out stronger and has a better AC owing to its better natural armor (basically, a thicker hide/coat), and if trained for war not only can it copy the wolf's trip gimmick, but can also wear armor. Throw even some basic barding on this thing and it's got the same AC as someone with full plate and shield, plus added mobility, tracking skills, and the ability to knock dudes on their asses. And it will only get better with spells.  Pictured: A terrifying tank Of course, as you level you might be tempted to replace your dog buddy with something bigger, like maybe a small bear. That's nice, but if you really want to mix things up, you don't want bears... ...you want dinosaurs  You have no idea how much you want this one Meet the Fleshraker Dinosaur from the Monster Manual III. Unlike previous monster manuals, the dinosaurs from the MM3 weren't concerned with anything like "actually existed", freeing them to create what is pretty much a Jurassic Park raptor from hell. While most animals only have one to three attacks (bite, maybe two claw attacks), the fleshraker starts with four, and can add in another claw when it makes a pounce attack. And boy, do these guys like making pounce attacks. Not only does pounce eliminate that annoying trade-off between "make all your attacks" and "move a significant distance" by allowing it to move and make all attacks at the same time, but if it hits something its size or smaller, it can trip its foe (without being tripped in return if it fails) and then grab it in a grapple, so you have raptor come flying across the battlefield (traveling up to 100 feet in a charge attack), knock you to the ground, then sit on you and continually shred your face. It is also poisonous. We are not done here. As a druid, you are a spellcaster, with a host of your own spells. Maybe you want to give it thicker skin, maybe you want to make it ten feet tall, maybe you want to enchant its attacks. Or maybe... Serpent Kingdoms posted:Venomfire Maybe you want its claws to drip acid, having three of its six attacks per round each do more damage than a fireball, and you want this ability to last all day. We are not done here. See, the druid has this ability called "wild shape" which allows it to assume the form of an animal, starting with small or medium ones. So not only can you have a pet dinosaur blender that spews acid, but you can be one too! And still cast your spells in the process if you have Natural Spell as a feat (there's a word for druids without natural spell. That word is "fool"). One of the starting features of animal companions is the ability to share spells, so any spell that a druid casts upon himself/herself also gets cast upon the animal companion as long as it remains within 5 feet of the druid once the spell has been cast. In theory this means that you have to carefully maneuver yourself so you and your animal companion remain side-by-side in the heat of battle. In practice, this just means that one of you rides on top of the other, since D&D allows you to use anything as a mount so long as it's larger than you are. So you can be a gorilla riding a bear while carrying a lance to take advantage of your massive strength (and the lance's double damage when used in a mounted charge). Or a bear riding a larger bear. Or a gorilla or a bear riding a dinosaur. Or anything, really.  Anything Of course, since the animal companion is a separate character from your druid, it can take its own actions, make its own checks and generally act under your direction, granting you two turns for one player (or more if you start spamming summons as well). Given that high level animal companions can be regular murder machines when combined with a druid's spell support, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that a druid comes with a free fighter, especially at lower levels where a fighter's contributions as damage dealer and meatwall are the most highly valued. The Ranger also gets an animal companion, but unlike druid, the 3e ranger's animal companion progresses like a druid whose level is equal to half the ranger's level. So a 20th level druid is bringing a 20th level animal, but a 20th level ranger is only bring a 10th level animal to a 20th level fight, plopping it squarely in the "liability" category. "Liability" is a pretty accurate term for many animals in D&D, since if you were a fighter who wanted to ride into battle atop a horse, it might serve you well enough for the first few levels, but twenty HP and 20-odd AC after armor won't exactly hold down the fort in the mid-levels, and will be knocked into the dust with a sneeze at higher levels. True, you can upgrade to more impressive mounts, but those ones suffer from the same static defenses, and people can shoot them out from under you, destroying thousands of gp worth of investment that you aren't getting back, forcing you into an expensive treadmill if you want to keep your knightly cred. Or you can be a paladin. At level 5, the paladin gets a special mount in the form of a horse, pony, riding dog or shark (for aquatic campaigns). Like the druid's animal companion, the mount gains offensive and defensive abilities as the paladin levels, becoming stronger and capable of surviving the higher level environments, making the paladin capable of remaining mounted and functioning even against the most challenging foes. You can even dismiss it and resummon it to keep it out of danger and let it heal up. But why settle for acceptable? Dungeon Master's Guide, p. 204 posted:A paladin of 6th level or higher can use a celestial heavy warhorse, dire wolf, hippogriff, large monstrous spider, large shark, unicorn, celestial warpony, dire bat, dire badger, dire weasel or giant lizard as a mount. Much like with the druid, a higher level paladin can use a better mount by taking a slight penalty to the paladin's effective level when determining the mount's bonus abilities. This is usually a spectacularly good deal. A level 6 paladin can ride around on a unicorn, which is a horse except stronger, tougher, faster, more nimble, possessing an enchanted weapon, thicker hide, the ability to heal wounds and poisons, the ability to also detect evil faster than a paladin, a bucket of immunities to things like poisons and mind control along with a permanent magic circle against evil effect which means the paladin and everyone within 10 feet has better saves and AC against evil creatures (most of the things a paladin fights are evil) in addition to being immune to mind control. We are not done here. The paladin's mount abilities take that unicorn and make it tougher still, giving it a thicker hide, stronger body, the ability to share saves and spells as well as take half damage from area attacks on a failed save, and no damage on a successful one. We are not done here. A unicorn can wear barding to further increase its AC from a respectable 22 to something like 26 or more (28 against evil characters thanks to magic circle). If you can't afford barding, mage armor will suffice, as will the paladin's own golden barding spell, which is like mage armor except it's for horses and scales with caster level (eventually matching plate armor). Slather on spells like barkskin or magic vestment and your unicorn's AC climbs into the 30s. We are not done here. A 6th level paladin can either spend a feat or take a level in Planar Paladin, sacrificing a use of Remove Disease to change your mount into a celestial version. A 6th level paladins' mount will have DR 5/magic, and there are not a whole lot of monsters a 6th level paladin will face that have access to magic weapons. We are not done here. Paladin mounts have a minimum of 6 intelligence, above the 3 necessary to be barely sapient and qualify for normal character options. A unicorn has 10 intelligence, making it as smart as the average human (and perfectly capable of talking). A 6th level paladin's unicorn mount will have three feats thanks to its boosted hit dice, and with rules for retraining you can tag out some of its lousier starting feats like Skill Focus (Survival) in exchange for something more interesting. Like stuff from Tome of Battle: the Book of Nine Swords. Two feats can dip into the Devoted Spirit school of fighting, letting you pick up the Iron Guard's Glare stance. While in this stance, enemies within your unicorn's reach take a -4 penalty to attacks against anything that isn't the unicorn (the stance itself is the predecessor to 4e's marking system). So your enemy can either attack you or your allies (and likely miss) or go for your mighty steed. At this point, with 30 AC, 60+ HP, healing abilities, and DR 5/magic, it's not so much a mount as it is a sparkling Robocop who eats personal weaponry for breakfast while you sit atop of it and smite evil with your lance.  Pretty much this If that's a bit too bullshit for your taste, you can always go for something a bit more reasonable. Take a hippogriff, griffon, giant owl, giant eagle, or pegasus as your mount at level 6, 7 or 8 and you will have all-day flight at a time when even the wizard struggles to stay aloft more than half an hour each day. Pegasi in particular are not only flying, but the fastest on land or in the air compared to the other flying mounts (at 120 ft fly speed, 60 foot ground speed, it's 20% faster than its next competitor, the hippogriff), and you can always take improved flight as one of your mount's feats to upgrade from average maneuverability to good maneuverability, granting your mount Vertical Take-Off and Landing capabilities along with the ability to hover. If you share the Fire Emblem fear of archers, the Magic Item Compendium has an armor crystal that can be mounted into a shield to grant an improved AC against ranged attacks and the ability to Deflect Arrows (assuming you don't want to spend money on getting a shield that does it anyways) so your falcoknight dreams can continue unhindered. Your pegasus doesn't even have to be proficient in the shield if you can't afford it, since nonproficiency just gives a penalty to attack rolls, and it's not as though you need your mobility platform to bite someone to death. Now, those who are fond of things such as "reason" may think "well, My Little Murderpony is nice and all, but there's no way you're fitting a horse into a dungeon." Those people forget that D&D is many things, but very few of them ever make sense. Any creature in the game is capable of squeezing to pass through a space that's at least half its size. A horse, as a creature occupy a 10 foot by 10 foot square (as of 3.5e) can thus squeeze into any 5 foot by 5 foot square, traveling at half speed and taking a -4 penalty to attacks and AC. Even with those penalties, your unicorn terminator is at still as tough and as fast as your average fighter, if not better. They can't fit through small-sized spaces, but then again most player characters are unlikely to chase kobolds into tunnels. "Well," others may think, "that's corridors covered, but good luck getting your horse across elevation changes." Guess what? Rules As Written, there's nothing that prevents your horse from making Climb checks. Lack of gripping appendages is not a factor. Stairs, cliff faces, you can even climb a rope- in fact, the unicorn's high Strength means that it's probably better climbing a rope than the wizard is (and a better jumper too. In fact, thanks to high strength and speed, an elephant in D&D is a better jumper than a cat, even though in real life elephants are too big to jump and risk serious injury just by falling over). If your DM is still some sort of house-ruling tyrant, you can always solve your elevation problem via spell, item or even just dismissing your mount and summoning it back later. All this is assuming you're not riding on a VTOL pegasus who can just fly up wherever you need to go.  If only someone had read the PHB, this never would have happened. Paizo, in their attempts to reign in some of 3e's nonsense, attempted to standardize the druid's animal companions so that they received bonuses at a more reasonable rate. While druids can no longer roll around with acid-dripping raptor chainsaws, at least they can start with a T-Rex at level one (albeit a small one). Most of the flying animal companions become large enough for human riders at level 7 (though halflings and gnomes can fly at level 1 if they're light enough). Rangers draw from the druid's list of companions as well (albeit at a penalty to their effective level), and so does just about any other class with a special mount or companion such as a cavalier, samurai, beastmaster barbarian or paladin. For the paladin, their divine bond is a little weirdly worded, since it says "this mount is usually a heavy horse (for a Medium paladin) or a pony (for a Small paladin), although more exotic mounts, such as a boar, camel, or dog are also suitable." The wording seems to suggest that they want you to use things that are actually usable as mounts, though given that paladins function as druids of their level, it's arguable that the rules let the paladin ride bears, wolves, gorillas or dinosaurs into battle. Though if your GM insists on being a stickler, the paladin's divine bond can be formed with their weapons instead, allowing them to enhance their chosen weapon with a variety of neat powers for several minutes up to several times per day, something that's probably going to be useful in any combat situation. Of course, since this thread is about ridiculously exploitable rules, this system is not foolproof. While the druid (and by extension the paladin, ranger, cavalier, samurai and a few other variants) have been reigned in by the new system, not all classes use it. Meet the antipaladin.  Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull threads The antipaladin is much like the regular paladin, except negative. While the paladins smites evil, heals wounds and afflictions with a touch and defends against fear, the antipaladin smites good, inflicts wounds and afflictions with a touch and penalizes saves against fear. The paladin has Divine Bond, and the antipaladin has Fiendish Boon and while Fiendish Boon works similarly on weapons, it does something completely different when it comes to companions. The paladin's companion uses the druid rules for animal companions, but the antipaladin's companion is a permanent summon monster. While the antipaladin can still access some fiendish versions of animals that the paladin can use, the antipaladin doesn't have the same size cap that prevents animal companions from growing bigger than Large, so you can roll around with full-sized rocs and T-Rexes. While novel, the greatest advantage of using summon monster is that it grants the antipaladin access to evil outsiders, and those fiends have something that animal companions will never have- spell-like abilities. Behold the succubus.  There are so many jokes you could make, but that would only serve to distract from the horror that is yet to come One of the oddities about 3e and its offspring is the fact that all creatures now have ability scores that govern their stats- The thing that makes it absolutely ridiculous is that ability scores are assigned based on how well they fit the monster concept. The succubus is a demon of seduction, and is supposed to be ridiculously attractive, thus it has a Charisma score of 27. Aside from it being used by nerds as a sort of indicator of hotness, it gives the succubus a rather substantial boost to social skills. Oh, and it also determines the difficulty class of it spell-like abilities. There are maybe twenty or so creatures who have a higher charisma than the succubus, and about two thirds of those are boss monsters such as archfiends. The standard succubus has the same Charisma as the balor, the most powerful demon in the game that isn't a demon lord. The succubus is a CR 7 monster with a CR 14 Save-Or-Lose spell in the form of Charm Monster, which the succubus can use at-will all day, every day. Charm Monster affects drat near anything with a pulse, and makes friends for almost two weeks per casting. Charmed monsters are friendly, not suicidal, but the succubus also has a ridiculous Bluff modifier, making it easy enough to con your target into doing a lot of things it wouldn't normally do. The succubus also has a once-per-day dominate person, which does make the target do incredibly stupid things for the next week or two (albeit with a chance to save), assuming the target is a humanoid. The succubus has at-will suggestion, which isn't as directly controlling as dominating someone, but does allow for some interesting functions assuming you can creatively phrase them. Suggestion is language-dependent, but the succubus has 100 ft telepathy and the ability to speak, understand, read and write all languages thanks to a permanent tongues. The succubus also has at-will detect thoughts and the ability to shapechange into any humanoid creature. We are not done yet. The succubus has an at-will greater teleport and ethereal jaunt, which allow the succubus to travel all over the planet as well as onto another plane where they're invisible and can move through walls. Succubi can only transport themselves plus 50 pounds of gear, but that's not actually a limitation- a Bag of Holding Type III weighs 35 pounds and holds 1000 pounds of stuff, while a portable hole weighs almost nothing and is limited only by volume. It's not fast enough to be valid for "scry and fry" attacks, but by piling your party into extra-dimensional storage, you can be on the other side of the world within thirty seconds and you can do that all day. If you're worried about breathing, just buy the right magic item for the trip. We are not done yet. Succubi are summoned with Summon Monster VI, which shows up at level 11 for an antipaladin. At level 11, the antipaladin's companion gains the advanced template, which boosts all ability scores by 4, pushing the succubus from 27 Charisma to 31. The succubus is human-shaped enough to have no trouble using magic items, such a headband of charisma that boosts the succubus' charisma even further, to a 35 or even 37, boosting the DCs by four to five each. With retraining rules, a succubus could swap out lackluster combat feats for Spell Focus (enchantment) and Greater Spell Focus (enchantment), pushing save-or-lose DCs up by another two. Charm Monster could have have a DC of 28 or so, giving it an at-will ability with a DC found on CR 22 monsters. Even a 20th level sorcerer who focuses on enchantment spells will have a difficult time exceeding that DC without using higher level spell slots, and that sorcerer will run out of slots eventually. This is the sidekick to an 11th level character. And this is before the target has been hit with anything to reduce its saving throw, such as making the target shaken, sickened, or cursed via intimidation or the antipaladin's touch, or maybe something like... PFSRD posted:Aura of Despair (Su) PFSRD posted:Aura of Depravity (Su) We are not done yet. Pathfinder succubi also have a new ability compared to 3e- the ability to once per day bestow a gift upon a willing humanoid target. This grants a +2 profane bonus to one ability score, and grants the succubus the ability to telepathically communicate with the target across any distance (and possibly even planar boundaries). No one may be the recipient of more than one succubus gift, but the succubi can give a gift to one person a day forever. If your allies already tolerate your demon-summoning antipaladin antics, they probably won't say no to a free +2 to their best ability score that stacks with any other bonus from items and the like. Furthermore, since talking is a free action, the succubus basically becomes an unlimited range wireless network, able to relay communications between any gifted party members without anyone else being the wiser. Furthermore, the succubus can use suggestion through the link, and while the rules seem to intend for it to be the succubus making suggestions on the target of the gift, it can also be read as allowing the succubus to use suggestion on enemies the target is fighting even while the succubus is lying on a beach on the other side of the world. The succubus is a glass cannon of a companion with a massively powerful save-or-lose at-will ability, and a host of utility powers that make the companion an excellent source of espionage, social skills, information gathering, shopping, communication and transportation. The problem is that while the advanced template and buying gear helps, the succubus doesn't have much to boost saves or HP at higher levels, though you can partly compensate by hanging back, flying out of reach or teleporting/ghosting out of danger. Higher level summons may be tougher, but they don't have the ridiculous Charm Cannon that comes from the massive Charisma of the succubus (though figure out what you can do when you've got a glabrezu who can grant a wish once a month to a mortal humanoid i.e. you). At higher levels the companion will gain spell resistance based on the level of the antipaladin, which can help, and maybe you can see if your GM will let you add levels/hit dice to your succubus instead of upgrading to higher level beatsticks. Even if you can't, you still have a super-charged companion who can raise an army, coordinate an assault, ferry you across the world, bypass many barriers, do your shopping, schmooze with your targets, communicate and translate with any creature, and mind control almost any beatstick you come across. Even for enemies immune to mind-affecting spells, you can still hit them with an army of minions who weren't when you're not just serving as a utility transport. Maybe that's a fair trade for the ability to have a vorpal sword for an hour a day?
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Feb 28, 2013 07:02
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I don't think it's a bad idea depending on the game, but the big problem is that first you have to be an antipaladin, who has the same problems of class-locked morality as the paladin, except with an even more ridiculous code. Assuming you've got a group, you've then got to hit level 11. The Way of the Wicked campaign is one of the few evil campaigns that goes from 1 to 20, and while it allows antipaladins it suggests they be Lawful Evil and deal with devils, which may prohibit your access to the succubi summon unless you work something out with your GM (4e switched succubi over to the devil side of the fence because it figured they were well-suited there). The erinyes just doesn't cut it (though any fiend with an at-will greater teleport can be used as a party taxi once you get portable holes). The other way to get a permanent summon monster is to be a level 20 Conjurer wizard, but that's kind of a trick in and of itself that only works for a very short time. While it doesn't have the advanced template and special defenses like the antipaladin's companion, the Conjurer can summon multiple monsters and doesn't have any penalties for losing them (but at the same time, it's harder to trust that the succubus is on your side, and you can't use their gifts as well).
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Feb 28, 2013 08:44
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I think Strength checks are supposed to receive size bonuses, but it's only listed for breaking down doors. Walls are right out. The wall of iron also has a duration of instantaneous, which means that it creates a permanent wall. In Pathfinder, they specifically added a line to the end of the Wall of Iron spell- "Iron created by this spell is not suitable for use in the creation of other objects and cannot be sold." Guess what wizards could do with this spell in 3e?
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Mar 1, 2013 21:25
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Going back to the succubus and antipaladin stuff I mentioned earlier, Uncle Khasim in the Pathfinder thread pointed out that the wording for Summon Monster not only forbids summoned monsters from using their own summoning spells, but also from using any teleportation or planar travel abilities. So RAW, a succubus probably can't teleport your party around (though the succubus still can fly you across obstacles). When it comes to summoning monsters, perhaps the only thing equal or superior to summoning evil outsiders is summoning good ones, because not only do they have similar spell-like abilities, they also cast spells. The Empyreal Knight gains the ability to use Summon Monster a number of times per day equal to the paladin's charisma modifier, scaling the ability to the paladin's level, which can be used to summon celestial creatures, archons, or angels, though the spell list is short on the latter two until high levels. Sadly, this ability is not as good as the Summoner, whose ability can be used more often, lasts longer and can be used to summon Azata, the Chaotic Good outsiders who show up more often in the mid-levels. On the bright side, the Empyreal Knight still has a mount like a regular paladin, only this one scales faster. At 12th level, the mount gains a fly speed equal to twice its land speed at good maneuverability (or improves to this speed/maneuverability if it already has a fly speed), which means you can ride into battle on a winged T-Rex. The more interesting paladin archetype is the Sacred Servant, which at 8th level gets the ability to cast Planar Ally free of charge once per week, with the ability scaling with level. Normally, Planar Ally is balanced by cost- keeping a creature around for a small task that takes only a few minutes costs the least, while it cost ten times more if you want to keep someone around for a few days. But since you don't have to pay for the service, there's no reason not to splurge on the 1 day/caster level version. Every seven days you can summon a creature for a number of days equal to your caster level, starting at 8, which means that at higher levels you can keep an ally around for two or more weeks while your ability recharges. True, the ability says that you don't have to pay "for reasonable tasks", but you're a paladin. Whistle up an angel and say "You and I are both exalted champions of the holy power of our god of light. Let us engage in jolly cooperation and go shove our golden boots up the asses of evil for the next week or so. You down?" then bump fists in the freeze-frame. As I mentioned earlier, Summon Monster comes with the restriction that your summons can't summon other monsters, teleport or engage in planar travel. Planar Ally is not a summoning spell, it is a calling spell which brings the entire creature into your world and is thus under no such restrictions. Several major good outsiders come with greater teleport as a spell-like ability, so there's nothing stopping you from using them as celestial taxis. At level 8, you're using lesser planar ally, which is capped at summoning outsiders with 6 hit dice. Probably one of the better options is the hound archon, which aside from being a decent fighter when you have the right spell support also has greater teleport at-will, which means you can give your party the ability to travel anywhere in the world before your team wizard can even learn a regular limited version of teleport. At level 12, you upgrade to regular planar ally, capped at summoning 12 hit dice worth of outsiders. The standard options are kind of dull, but the coatl is a decent enough flying wizard snake if you don't feel like summoning more hound archons. Sadly, Paizo upped the hit dice on the Trumpet Archon from 12 to 14, preventing you from being a 12th level character who could whistle up a 14th level cleric (as you could in 3e, if you were willing to pay for it). You can still summon a Shield Archon to teleport around and also tank for you and your team, or a movanic deva to fight and restore you. At level 16, you upgrade to greater planar ally, capped at summoning 18 hit dice worth of outsiders. This is the point where poo poo officially derails. Right from the word go, you can summon a Planetar, and thus be a 16th level paladin who can summon a 16th level cleric. In fact, since you can use this ability once per week to summon something for 16 days, you can have two 16th level clerics with you at all times, or three for two days every week. But these aren't 16th level clerics, they're better. True, they don't have access to the ability to channel positive energy or domain boosts, and they aren't proficient with any armor. But you can cast mage armor on them or give them magic items, and they have better hit points, attack bonuses, and ability scores, plus a protective aura that shields them and any allies from spells and the attacks of evil. They have their own pile of spell-like abilities, including the ability to dispel magic, curses, diseases and fatigue at-will, raise the dead, damage and debilitate foes, even shatter buildings or remove permanent negative levels. They can also disguise themselves as regular humanoids, speak with any creature living or dead, and see through illusions, magical disguises, lies, evil and even basic traps. This is the stuff they can do without casting their 16 levels of spells. If they do start using their spells, well... they can summon more angels. Or maybe cast greater planar ally to bring in their own buddies. Sadly, planetars can't teleport, though they can cast plane shift. But hey, you can also summon a trumpet archon, who can teleport at-will and also cast spells as a 14th level cleric. Pity Star Archons have 19 hit dice instead of 18, putting them just out of reach. Of course, recall that the Sacred Servant's planar ally ability just targets outsiders, and unlike the Empyreal Knight it has no further restrictions other than the fact that the paladin can't use it to summon creatures with the chaotic or evil subtypes due to the rules of spellcasting (though if you can be a neutral good paladin then you can summon chaotic outsiders). Thus, not only can you summon things such as the neutral good agathions like Cetaceals (who can also teleport), you don't even have to have stick to good outsiders. A Shaitan is a lawful neutral earth genie with a pile of abilities that deal with earth. A shaitan pasha has 18 hit dice and can be summoned with Greater Planar Ally. Among its powers is the ability to grant three wishes... per day. Two or three of these guys out at once and you can do drat near anything, including giving you and your buddies a +5 bonus to every stat just because. As long as you're in the market for having your GM throw the rulebook at your head, remember that not only can you call for outsiders, but you can ask for specific ones. An aasimar is an outsider, and all of its six to eighteen hit dice can be class levels, so your level 16 paladin can request a level 18 aasimar cleric or wizard. If you want to get even more ridiculous, half-celestial is a template that can be applied to almost any creature, turning it into an outsider and increasing its power without actually giving it any extra hit dice. Ask for half-celestial level orc barbarians, or maybe half-celestial dragons. Your Angel Summoner may not be able to summon a horde of celestial super-beings at-will, but you can certainly make one hell of a show at it. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 2, 2013 |
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Mar 2, 2013 00:57
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True, but it doesn't mean you can't make knowledge (the planes) checks to figure out if there are any high-level aasimar clerics you know of, and then ask for one of them. It's also something you might be able to sneak up on your GM by asking innocuous questions about the holy beings in the campaign setting to gather information you can later use when you phone-a-friend.
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Mar 2, 2013 01:39
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Pathfinder Murphy's Rules grab bag! Actually, the monk gets one ki point every other level as a balancing factor. And the restriction is even funnier. Vow of Poverty posted:Restriction: The monk taking a vow of poverty must never own more than six possessions—a simple set of clothing, a pair of sandals or shoes, a bowl, a sack, a blanket, and any one other item. Five of these items must be of plain and simple make, though one can be of some value (often an heirloom of great personal significance to the monk). Note the fact that one item can have "some value." Characters in Pathfinder are like characters in D&D, and they are expected to have a certain amount of magical bling at each level (this is not a particularly good way of setting expectations since it relies on a ton of assumptions, but ignoring that for now). The end result is that the monk's entire net worth becomes tied up in that one item. A 20th level monk is worth almost 900,000 gold pieces in magical gear. "I have nothing but the sandals on my feet, the shirt on my back, a bowl to beg with, a blanket to sleep on, a sack to carry my meager belongings and my interdimensional flying pleasure palace. Truly mine is a life of simple asceticism and meditation."
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Mar 5, 2013 19:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I just want to say James Jacobs wrote this. One of these days I expect to see a large body of James Jacob's work in Fatal & Friends, even if I have to do it myself once I catch up with the thread. Anyways, content. You've just seen the Chaotic Evil Demoniac who is devoted to demons, so why not take a look at its Lawful Evil counterpart, the diabolist? (Incidentally the whole ritualistic stuff the demoniac comes with isn't part of the PrC, it's part of the PrC's prerequisite: Demonic Obedience, a feat open to any 3rd level character willing to spend a few skill ranks. Now any class can be that guy.) So, what do we get? Well, for starters, your rear end now belongs to Asmodeus. If you kick it, go directly to hell, do not pass go, do not collect 200 gp. Obviously, you're to have trouble getting back into the game, as people are going to have trouble resurrecting you. Except for the fact where they won't. See, the difficulty for bringing you back requires the person casting the spell to make a caster level check against a DC equal to 10 + your levels in the diabolist PrC. So a fresh-faced damned with one level in the class requires a DC 11 check to bring back. The lowest level spells that bring you back from the dead require a caster level of 9, so a roll of 1d20 + 9 against a DC 11 can only fail on a natural 1. If you're the most horrific diabolist to ever walk the face of the earth, the DC is 10 + 10 levels = 20. So a person who just learned to raise the dead can still haul your rear end from the pit of hell 50% of the time. Fortunately, at level 5 this penalty is waived as long as your death wasn't ordered by Asmodeus or a similar high-level lord of hell. So thanks for that huge favor. Of course, even if your death was ordered by hell, it's still ridiculously easy for one of your allies to bring you back. gently caress the police, coming straight from the underworld. There's one other thing a starting diabolist gets- an imp. Not just any imp, mind you, but an imp that uses the rules for animal companions. On the surface, this sort of makes sense. You'd picture a character making pacts with the hells to have a fawning servant who goes "yes master, how wonderful!" and the animal companion rules are rules for a companion that levels with you. Except... well, animal companion rules were designed around a specific sort of character, the kind whose animal companion fights alongside them and grows to face the challenges ahead. End result is that when you subject an imp to the animal companion rules, things get a little strange. For starters, the act of being your companion means the imp gets seriously ripped. Thanks to the bonuses from the animal companion, an imp is stronger and more agile than a normal imp, and has a thicker hide. The more you level, the stronger your imp gets. At 20th level, your imp gets +6 to strength and dexterity, and +12 to its natural armor, and you have 4 floating points to put into any of its ability scores just like you would when you level up. So if you poured them into strength, your imp would have 20 Strength and 23 Dexterity and an AC of 32, making it pretty much the Bruce Lee of impdom. It would also have 16d10 hit dice, compared to a druid animal companion's 16d8, though it wouldn't have much of a Constitution modifier. It's also just a tiny (albeit incredibly muscular) imp. Of course, as an imp, it differs from animal companions in one unique way- spell-like abilities. In particular, it has the ability to take on alternate forms using beast shape II. When it uses beast shape II to change into a medium animal, not only does it gain a +2 bonus to strength (pushing it to 22) and a +2 bonus to natural armor, but it also gains the animal's senses, movement, and some of its special attacks. While normal imps are limited to choosing between a boar, a bat, a raven or a big spider, a diabolist's imp can learn any medium animal as an alternate form for a bonus trick. So you could turn into a leopard and pick up pounce so muscle imp can make five attacks on a charge. Or if that's not enough for you, you can have your imp pick up the ability to shapeshift into a loving dinosaur and do the same thing. Hell, pick up both forms, you've got tricks to spare (admittedly, leopard is actually better since the listed version doesn't take any off-hand penalty to any of its attacks). It can also pick up telepathy as one of its bonus tricks, letting it communicate with anything who has a language. One other thing that's interesting about animal companions is that not only do they gain hit dice, they also gain feats for those hit dice. And not only do you get to pick the feats, but since an imp is as intelligent as a person (actually, it's smarter), it can choose from the same feat pool as player characters so long as it meets the prerequisites. Ultimate Magic introduced the Eldritch Heritage chain of feats, which allows you to spend a feat to pick up low-level sorcerer bloodline ability. Spend more feats, and you can pick up abilities, all the way to their 15th level ability, provided you have the prerequisites including the charisma score for it. Some bloodlines are of dubious value for a sorcerer, but utterly hilarious on things that aren't sorcerers. An imp has 14 charisma to start with, and can boost its charisma by 1 point every 4 hit dice. The orc bloodline has an interesting feature for its ninth level ability, namely the fact that it gets a scaling inherent bonus to strength. Characters with 15 Charisma can take Improved Eldritch Heritage to acquire that ability at level 11. For our imp, one ability point before you hit 11 hit dice will make our muscle imp even more muscular, gaining a +2 inherent bonus to strength that increases to +4 at 15 hit dice. If you're feeling particularly cheeky, a similar benefit can be acquired with the Abyssal bloodline, meaning you have a devil whose ancestors were demons.  (Incidentally, Eldritch Heritage is a pretty great feat chain for characters with the charisma to afford it. Paladins/antipaladins and battle oracles have little trouble justifying the Charisma needed for the Orc bloodline's bonuses (though the skill focus prerequisite is a bit of a waste), and other classes might find other bloodlines they like, such as picking up Rakshasa bloodline on a ninja for the bonuses to bluff, nondetection, shapechanging and disguises from Skill Focus. Oni bloodline provides a similar shapeshifting bonus for fewer feats, but requires two extra levels to pay off). But why settle? As a humanoid-shaped character with hands and feet, and imp has all the magic item spell slots that a regular character has, so there's nothing stopping you from picking up a magic item designed to boost your imp's ability scores even further. A belt of giant's strength +6 combined with orc or abyssal heritage means that a 20th level companion imp has 28 strength, or 30 when it shapeshifts into an animal using alternate form. Throw on an amulet of mighty fists +5 and your imp leopard is pouncing for five attacks at +29 to hit, 1dX+15 to damage. Throw on power attack and that's another +8 damage to each one. And this is before bonuses to hit and damage from spells, which means your imp can do this all drat day (or better with other magic items, such as welding on a belt of thunderous charging to scale up the damage). It's competitive with a monk of your level (not an astonishing feat, I admit, but it's your minion, not your main character). And this is before you start throwing on bonuses from spells or things like inspire courage. Now, the funny thing about the diabolist's imp, is that the diabolist's effective druid level is equal to its levels in the PrC, plus its caster highest level. The diabolist PrC boosts caster level, which means that levels in the PrC effectively count twice. The lowest possible level for entry into the PrC is 5, meaning that a level 13 character (level 5 caster/level 8 diabolist) counts as a level 21 druid for the imp's abilities, though the chart for animal companions caps out at level 20. But... what if it didn't? If there's one thing 3e and its offspring love, it's predictable trajectories. Animal companions are no different. An animal companion has hit dice equal to 2/3rds your druid level (rounded down) + 1, and a BAB equal to 3/4ths of the hit dice. Its Fortitude and Reflex saves are equal to 1/2 the hit dice + 2, and its Will save is equal to 1/3 the hit dice rounded down. It also gains one ability point to boost its scores per 4 hit dice of the animal companion. The natural armor bonus scales up by 2 points every 3 levels of the druid, and the bonus to Strength and Dexterity increases by 1 point every 3 levels of druid. The companion has one bonus trick, and gains one additional trick every 3 levels of druid. A 5 caster/8 diabolist counts as a 21st level druid, and a 10 caster/10 diabolist counts as a 30th level druid. So what does a 30th level druid companion look like? Well, our theoretical imp has 21 hit dice, +15 bab, +12 Fort and Ref, +7 Will, five ability points, +10 to Strength and Dexterity, +20 to natural armor, and 11 bonus tricks. It also has 12 feats. Well, we can put two points into strength, and then a point into Dexterity and Intelligence to round them off for sweet bonuses, and a point into Charisma so the imp qualifies for Improved Eldritch Heritage. Our imp's strength goes from 10 base, +10 from companion, +2 from levels, +6 inherent (Eldritch Heritage), and +6 from equipment = 34 total Dexterity is 17 base + 10 companion + 1 level = 28, or 34 as well with equipment bonuses. AC is 10 base + 12 Dex + 21 natural armor + 2 size = 45, and that's before things like mage armor (+4) or deflection bonuses or bonuses to natural armor from barkskin or amulets of natural armor (+5). The Imp has 21d10 hit dice, or 120 hp on average, which is kind of low, but you can throw a +6 constitution booster by really spending some money so your imp can have an extra 63 HP. An imp also has DR and fast healing naturally, but the diabolist version doesn't seem to get it. Oh well! So if the imp shapeshifts into a medium leopard, and you cast Mage armor on it (a low level spell) along with an amulet of mighty fists +5, you've got a pounce for five attacks at +33 (well +35 when charging) hits for maybe 100+ damage depending on how many alternate forms of damage you can stack on. But that's not enough, so it's time to get dangerously cheesy. See, one other feature of the animal companion is the ability to share spells. While I've already mentioned one application (druids riding on their animal companions or vice versa so both can share the same spell), it also means that you can target your animal companion with any spell marked "personal". Nondruids can target their companions with personal spells so long as the spell comes from the class that gave you animal companion levels. Diabolist can apply to any class capable of calling evil outsiders, including wizards. Wizards have a host of personal spells designed to turn them from terrible combatants into average combatants. While largely a waste of time on a wizard, our imp companion is an above-average combatant to begin with. So let's bust out the big guns. Shapechange is among the biggest there is, allowing the caster to turn into a host of interesting things. But we can mix it up with other spells such as fiery body to turn our imp into huge dragon made of fire. And then you teach it how to fight. So while it doesn't have pounce, it does have several other things, namely 44 strength (making it stronger than most real dragons), 24 Constitution (giving it 147 extra hit points, or about 270 without Toughness), +43 or so to hit, 55 AC, and six attacks per round that hit for between 2d8+48, 2d6+34 and 1d8+19 with power attack (dropping your attack bonus down to +37 or so, admittedly). And hell, there are still more spells you can cast on it to boost these numbers even further (haste, magic circle, heroism, etc). End result is that with your support you can enable your lowly imp to go Super Saiyan and mop the floor with a pit fiend, a general of hell. All this while still being a level 20 wizard. And even if you can't be a level 30 druid, you can always be a level 20 one since the PrC stacks with your caster level in any other class, meaning a 1 level dip is all you need. Oh, and weirdly enough, the use of imps as companions isn't unprecedented. There are already rules for your character having an imp companion- namely through familiars. A character with the Improved Familiar feat can have an imp starting at level 7, and an Infernal Binder conjuration wizard gets one for free. Thus a level 7+ wizard who takes the diabolist PrC can have two imps at the same time- one animal companion, one familiar. Next Time: The rest of the diabolist prestige class. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Mar 6, 2013 |
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Mar 6, 2013 22:36
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Previously, I mentioned the Diabolist prestige class in Pathfinder, and discussed how it wasn't much of a penalty to disallow resurrection, and it also allowed you to build a poo poo-kicking super imp companion. At any rate, that leaves us with the rest of its class features. Skipping around, one of its abilities is the ability to turn spells that deal energy damage (such as fire, cold, lightning, sonic, or acid) into spells that deal hellfire damage. This is interesting because under no circumstances does the game ever tell you what hellfire damage actually is. There are several possible definitions. The hellfire ray spell does it in the form of half the damage being fire damage while the other half is unholy damage that bypasses fire resistance and immunity. The infernal bloodline for sorcerers has it just as pure fire damage with Good creatures being shaken by the ability. There's also the hellfire hazard which functions like hellfire ray in that half the damage is fire and half the damage is unholy, except that unholy damage does no damage to evil creatures or creatures protected from evil, and double damage to good creatures. Aside from the sorcerer bloodline, all of these come from the same book. Augment Summoning is a fun feat for people who like to summon things, and is probably something someone taking this class would want anyways. It makes your summons stronger and tougher It's also the prerequisite for another feat that allows you to better zerg your opponents. You also gain the spell-like abilities to cast the aforementioned hellfire ray spell. In addition to doing questionable forms of damage, it has a "save or be damned" for anyone who gets killed by it, possibly making them harder to resurrect. Since the caster level check is based on the target's hit dice, it's oddly harder to resurrect the the target than the diabolist who cast the spell, and a late-game target with dozens of hit dice is almost impossible to bring back, except if restored by an evil caster. Due to the way the spell is phrased, there is no indication that being killed by the spell, failing your will save and being damned is required for the follow-up sentence of being difficult to return from the dead, and there is also no duration on the damnation either (it doesn't seem to wear off once you've been successfully raised). So you could scratch someone with the spell once and then they'd forever be harder to revive by non-evil casters. gently caress heroic characters, I guess. You also gain the ability to make two short-range or one long-range teleport a day. It's a thing, I suppose. But while the imp companion, Augment Summoning and maybe the spell-like abilities are generically useful, the other features of the prestige class have been clearly designed with certain characters in mind. To enter the class requires that a character successfully calls a devil and gets it to serve for a day. There are a few ways of doing this. One is by using the planar ally series of spells, employed by clerics, oracles and in some cases even a paladin (well, not for the summoning of devils, but you get the idea). As mentioned in the paladin write-up, the way planar ally works is that a divine caster phones home and the powers that be send a similarly-aligned outsider, who the divine caster then pays a certain amount based on the strength of the outsider and how long the outsider is to stick around. The fact that it's a divine spell and that such spells take on alignment aspects of the creature called means that divine casters can't summon things whose alignments are opposed to their deity/cause. Wizards don't play like that. Arcane casters like wizards, sorcerers, and summoners rely on planar binding for all their extraplanar calls. For planar binding, you start by creating a magic circle that opposes the alignment of the thing you're trying to call (or rather, is not aligned with the creature you're trying to call. True Neutral creatures are blocked by every form of magic circle). Then you can cast a planar binding spell and whistle up a creature. If it fails its will save, it shows up in your circle. Of course, you'd only do that if you weren't very good at being a wizard. Once called via planar binding, the outsider is free to test the circle with its spell resistance, teleport out or just shoot you with its ranged attacks/spells. And while the outsider can't directly attack the circle, it can convince others to mess with the lay-out and set it free. You probably won't hold your new friend for very long. Now, if you want to do this right, you first augment your magic circle with a diagram with a bunch of fun little symbols and sigils. This takes 10 minutes and requires a DC 20 Spellcraft check, and since you can take 10 for another 10 minutes of time, you should be able to hit this easily by the time you reach a level where you can cast planar binding in any form, though if you're recklessly casting from an earlier level with scrolls or something, you can still take 20, spending 200 minutes to make sure you get the circle right. This diagram prevents the creature from breaking out using its spell resistance, and prohibits its ranged attacks and spells from crossing the diagram. You can also cast dimensional anchor on the diagram before you start the binding spell to prevent the creature from using planar travel abilities for several days while it's held in the circle. The only way for the outsider to get out now is for someone else to disturb the (very delicate) circle, or for it to make a Charisma check, against a DC equal to 15 + your caster level + your Charisma modifier, and the DC is increased by a further 5 for the diagram, so 20 + caster level + your Charisma modifier. At the earliest you can normally cast lesser planar binding as a wizard, that's 29 + your Charisma modifier, and it only goes up. Since a Charisma check is a raw 1d20 + outsider's Charisma modifier, even if the outsider rolls a natural 20, it still has to have a Charisma modifier greater than yours + your level. This means it's almost impossible for the outsider to get out under its own power once it has failed its will save and been bound. So now that you've got an outsider, what do you with it? With planar ally, you pay a fair wage and then you're done with, but with planar binding you... negotiate. You do this by making an opposed Charisma check, with a bonus of up to +6 assigned to based on the task and reward. Note that there is nothing preventing you from offering a terrible bargain like "serve me or die", it's just that you won't get any additional bonus on the check (but also no penalty, unless the outsider gets a +6 bonus to its check). Though it does say that "impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to" but doesn't really define what "unreasonable" means. If you succeed, you just got a new employee. Fail and nothing happens, and you can make a check again the next day with either a different offer or the exact same offer, and can keep trying for up to a day per caster level. The only thing you have to worry about is rolling a natural 1, which lets the outsider break free. In order to increase your odds, you can do things like offering up sacrifices that intrigue the outsider... or you can just wear a nice hat. (One of the more interesting things about Pathfinder is that you have a headband slot which is separate from your head slot, and is the slot casters use for items that boost their mental stats and thus their casting abilities. A headband of superior intellect takes up the headband slot for a wizard, while a circlet of persuasion is described as a headband but takes up the head slot. Fighters and other physical-focus characters have no such luck, since their belts of physical stat boosting take up the same belt slot as other items. There is no "waist" slot. )Many of the diabolist's other class features revolve around boosting the character's bonus to Charisma checks against devils, meaning that even a wizard with poor Charisma can still do well enough, while a Charisma-based arcane caster like the sorcerer or summoner can pretty much hold devils over the fire every time they want to strike up a deal, culminating in the PrC's capstone ability to add half your Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate modifier to Charisma-checks to bargain with devils you know, and since those skill checks are also Charisma based, you're making a check of something like 1d20 + your Charisma modifier + 6 + (your level + your charisma modifier + feat + item bonuses)/2 + misc bonuses against 1d20 + devil's charisma modifier + misc bonuses, making it incredibly likely that you'll be able to cow even the strongest pit fiend. Of course, this class is also open to anyone who can cast planar ally, which doesn't make any Charisma checks whatsoever, making the capstone pretty much useless. The only real benefit is the Infernal Bargain ability at level 2, which lets you make an opposed Charisma check to halve the price, which is boosted by your Infernal Charisma bonus to Charisma checks against devils, but might not work with the capstone ability. Now, that's not to say that divine casters can't cast planar binding. The Outer Rifts oracle adds the spells to the oracle's spell list, and a cleric with the devil domain can use planar binding to call devils only. It would be a good fit if only it worked. Planar binding requires the caster to trap the subject with an appropriate magic circle, so to bind an evil outsider like a devil would require the cleric to use a magic circle against evil. Unfortunately, since the spell protects against evil creatures, that makes it a Good spell, and clerics can't cast spells with alignment descriptors opposed to their deities. A cleric of Asmodeus could cast magic circle against good (an evil spell) or magic circle against chaos (a lawful spell), but not one of the other two. Even if the "devils only" restriction was removed, and your character thought it would be delightful to use planar binding to shackle an angel into service of Asmodeus, you couldn't do it, because casting planar binding to summon a creature with an alignment subtype gives the spell that alignment descriptor. Binding an angel makes it a good spell, so a cleric of Asmodeus couldn't cast it. The only thing a cleric could successfully bind would be true neutral outsiders, and the spell doesn't allow for that. It's completely worthless (barring some sort of cleric who doesn't have a deity). Oracles don't have the same restriction on aligned spells, unlike clerics and inquisitors (and paladins, so that aforementioned angel summoner could hypothetically call up some devils to go evil-hunting, though with the paladin's code of conduct that would be a serious can of worms). Wizards still don't give a gently caress about such petty things like morality, and are free to learn and cast magic circles and conjuration spells no matter the alignment. The alignment restriction on clerics means that they can only summon things that are ideologically aligned with their deities. Since a wizard gives no fucks whatsoever, there is nothing stopping a Lawful Evil wizard from using summon monster IX to summoning an angel or archon and then pointing it at an orphanage or nunnery and telling it to go wild. So an evil cleric can only summon fiends, but an evil wizard can make angels eat babies. The one other thing the diabolist gets is a bonus to researching the True Names of devils. Now, True Names are a feature of most outsiders, and knowledge of them makes it easier for you to call on an outsider, giving it a -5 penalty to its will save to resist being called, and a -5 penalty on checks to get out of the circle if its true name has been inscribed there. You can discover an outsider's true name with a month-long research session in a library or a quest to old ruins and the like, followed by making a Knowledge (the planes) check based on the outsider's number of hit dice. Or you can just be a wizard. Wizards can take the True Name feat, which allows them to instantly know the name of one outsider, letting them call it up once per day as if using planar binding, only they get to make it work for free. You can also be a dick and mispronounce the name to cause the creature real physical pain. Every time you take the feat, you learn a new true name. The feat exists at a weird intersection between mechanics and plot, since it states that outsider works for you out of fear that its true name would be revealed, and may conspire to make you forget the true name or swear to never use it again. So if one of those situations happens or if the outsider dies, what becomes of your feat? What happens if you share the true name? What happens if you learn a different true name normally? What happens if you lose your memory but you wrote it down somewhere else? So let's learn the poo poo out of some true names. Now, you might think that a diabolist would be good at learning true names, but if you really want to do some heavy learning, you're going to want to ace some Knowledge (the planes) checks, and for that you'll need a bard. A bard has two things of interest- Bardic Knowledge, which lets you add half your bard level to knowledge checks, and Lore Master, which lets you take 10 or even 20 on knowledge checks as a standard action. Now, you could then pump your Intelligence score to make your Knowledge checks better, but you can do better than that by taking a level of oracle and going for the lore mysteries, of which the Lore Keeper ability lets you use your Charisma modifier instead of your Intelligence modifier for knowledge checks, since "you learn most of your information through tales, songs, and poems" (with some weird implications since you're researching true names). Since you're Charisma-based, feel free to be a gnome, and take the Academic gnome trait to get +2 racial bonus to a Knowledge check of your choice, and maybe take a trait and a few feats to boost your knowledge (the planes) skill further. Now, how high can you stack your Charisma? Well, you can point buy your way to an 18, then add +2 from being a gnome, +5 from boosting your Charisma over 20 levels, and a +6 enhancement bonus from an item, and +1 to +3 from being middle age through venerable. If you want to blow the bank, you can also add a +5 inherent bonus from wishes or similar features, and a +2 profane bonus from contracting with the succubus I mentioned back in the antipaladin write-up. So 32 through 41, or a +11 to +15 bonus. Let's stick with the lowball estimate for the moment. Next, you stick a mask over your face, rendering you blind, but granting you a +10 competence bonus to knowledge checks. Then you cast one of your bard or oracle spells for an insight bonus to the knowledge check. Then pick up a luck bonus from a stone. 1d20 + 20 (ranks) + 3 (class skill) + 11 (Charisma) + 9 (bardic knowledge) + 10 (mask) + 8 (spell insight) + 12 (feats) + 2 (trait) + 2 (racial) + 1 (luck) =1d20+78 Take 10 for a check result of 88. This is a low estimate. Now, the DC is 10 + target's hit dice, with an optional bonus to the DC of up to +10 for things that are especially powerful and well-hidden. Assuming the + 10 is always in play, the bard can learn the True Name of any outsider with 68 hit dice. In the Pathfinder game, the only listed outsiders have 40 hit dice or fewer, so let's get theoretical. The SRD that Pathfinder is based on also includes Deities & Demigods, which lists the rules for statting up your favorite deities. Most of them have 20 hit dice of outsider plus some amount of class levels. Greater deities like Zeus tend to have 20 hit dice, then 50 or so levels for a total of 70, putting them just out of our reach. Now, you could boost the bard's Charisma modifier through inherent bonuses, age bonuses, or profane bonuses from a succubus, or you could try something else. Recall Eldritch Heritage, which allows a character with the Charisma to spare to pick up sorcerer bloodline abilities. The Arcane Bloodline gives the bard an arcane bond like a wizard, which you can use to pick up a familiar. Familiars have all the skill ranks that their masters have, which means they can use the Aid Another action to make a DC 10 check and add +2 to any of your skill rolls. Multiclassing into Infernal Binder gives a familiar and also +3 to Knowledge (the planes), though the familiar won't improve on its own. (Also, you can have a giant isopod as a familiar). With the aid of a pet raven, you now know the True Name of Odin. There is nothing in the world that can hide its true name from you, and nothing that says you have to hide the true name from the world. Share it with your friends, write it on bathroom walls, do whatever you want with it and piss off dangerous beings in the process. Admittedly, greater planar binding caps out at 18 hit dice, so there's not a whole lot of direct mechanical use to knowing the true name of a deity or archfiend. Of course, there's the problem of researching true names requiring you to spend your time inside of a library or on a quest for a month, which sort of cuts into your adventure time. But why let that slow you down? The text for the Mask of a Thousand Tomes implies that it's got a library of a thousand tomes stored in it, and even if your DM won't let that fly, there's nothing that says that your research has to be conducted in a big library, or even a valid one, so you can carry around a bag of holding full of your library of Elminister fanfiction and research true names in there. With the right items, you won't have to eat or drink, age at all, sleep much or even breathe, and you can get some for your little familiar buddy as well. Since you're a bard and not really a combatant, you can hang out in the bag of holding all day, just studying away. If your party needs you, they can open the bag and you can sing some songs or maybe even stick your head out for a few seconds to cast a spell before going back to your research. If your party doesn't need you, then you've got a scenario where once a month they gather around a mysterious bag, which parts open to reveal the head of a middle-aged gnome with a mask of paper and several shiny rocks floating in orbit. A raven caws, and the gnome speaks but a single name of terrible power, before vanishing back into the bag for another month. And then the wizard takes the name and uses it to enslave the powers of creation. Because wizards don't give a gently caress. (Technically, you could just send the raven up to deliver your message for you and basically never see the outside again). The diabolist doesn't really have a unique trick outside of big impin', since the rest of its mechanics can be used with a wider variety of creatures than just devils, and often can be used better by a character build dedicated to it. But the general mechanics are still potent enough to prove one thing: Wizards are loving assholes.
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Mar 16, 2013 01:44
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Let's talk a little about Sorcerers and Wizards in 3.5. More than we do, that is. And it gets better than that when you play Pathfinder. There's a new collection of Wizard-only feats called discoveries that wizards can take with their own feats or their one bonus feat every five levels. One of them is Fast Study, which allows the wizard to prepare all spells within 15 minutes instead of an hour, with the minimum prep time being 1 minute instead of 15. And while banning opposition schools meant you couldn't use those spells ever in 3e, Pathfinder wizards find that sort of thing to be annoying. Opposition school spells can be learned as normal and merely require two spell slots instead of one to prepare, plus you take a -4 penalty to checks made to create items that have an opposition spell as a prereq. Of course, if even that slap on the wrist is too much, a level 9 wizard can take Opposition Research as a feat to go from two opposing schools to just one. Now, if you want even more spells than you get from being a specialist wizard, take a look at your arcane bond. The familiar has already been mentioned as a floating source of aid another bonuses, plus the ability to carry spells and even use magic items like wands if your familiar has the appropriate appendages, but your arcane bond isn't limited to just familiars. You can instead choose to have a bond with an item, which allows you to enchant the item as though you had the appropriate feat, and also once per day lets you cast any spell you know without expending a slot or even preparing it. The downside is that when you don't have the item on-hand you have to make an annoying concentration check or lose the spell when you cast. While annoying if your item is a weapon, wand or staff prone to getting smashed or dropped in a fight, if your item is something like an amulet or ring it can be incredibly difficult to remove, especially if your ring is enchanted so that it can't be removed without cutting off your finger. If you worry about pick-pockets shaking your hand, get a meridian belt, which allows you to wear rings on your feet (and while you can wear four rings, you can only have two active at a time). If you bond with an amulet, you can get one that lets you cast even more spells per day. (Also, your wizard can use a pirate hook hand and still cast spells and deliver touch attacks.) Should you wish to have some form of the sorcerer's ability to spam the same spell even if you didn't prepare enough copies, simply buy or build a few Pearls of Power, which allows you to recall any spell of a particular level based on the item that you prepared and then cast that day. You don't even have to use it to recover spells you think you might need, you can simply think "well, I cast my last copy of fly a few hours ago and here's a cliff I need to bypass. Order up!" Build them yourself and you can have a pretty pile of trinkets that you can keep in your back pocket for the low cost of 1000 gp multiplied by the square of the spell level. The Runestone of Power has a similar function for spontaneous casters, but costs twice as much. So then there's the whole thing with the wizard's spellbook, which the wizard needs to prepare spells each day. Furthermore, each spell takes up 1 page per spell level, and scribing new spells outside of the free ones you get at each level costs 100 gp per page, which can add up. Fortunately, there's the Blessed Book, which is not only waterproof and locked (and can be magically locked to keep people other than you out), but can hold 1000 pages worth of spells for you and doesn't cost anything more when you do it. That's some big savings right there, and if you just spaced it out evenly you could store 18 spells per level of spell you could cast, more than enough for any wizard's needs. But what if that wasn't enough for you? What would it take to store the knowledge of every spell? Well, taking the list from the SRD and dumping it into Excel gives us the following spell counts: 0th- 28 1st- 99 2nd- 134 3rd- 114 4th- 94 5th- 87 6th- 75 7th- 66 8th- 48 9th- 45 Totaling it up gives us... .5*28+1*99+2*134+3*114+4*94+5*87+6*75+7*66+8*48+9*45= 3235 pages worth of magic. A little over three blessed books, so let's just call it four to give us room for the spells Paizo or the SRD hasn't had time to write in. This means that the Encyclopedia Magicka is a four volume set, though admittedly it'd take over a year working in 8 hour shifts to write them all down. And someone with a spellbook can take a feat to halve it even further, down to a two volume set and a sixth of the time, finishing up transcribing in a month or two. Or possibly even faster. Two to four volumes of absolute power are fine and dandy, but that just means it takes fewer thefts to leave you with nothing. Well, for starters, fewer volumes means that there are fewer things you need to spend money on to trap the poo poo out of them. Spells that do area damage are probably a poor idea, but if you can somehow cast or find someone who can cast something like greater glyph of warding (such as by binding an outsider), you can attach some nice spells such as a geas along the lines of "give me back my book, you rear end in a top hat." There are also fun magical traps you can put into the text such as sepia snake sigil which forces anyone who reads it to make a Reflex saving throw or be magically trapped for several days (and if you're willing to get creative, note that the spell works based on reading and line of sight/effect, so you can cast this thing on a banner and someone else can trigger it just by reading it, even from a distance using a telescope. Just make sure no one else reads it before the target). At any rate, the good thing about spellbooks is that you only need them when you're preparing spells, which can be only a few minutes a day if you have the right feat. So when you're not using them, you can store them someplace safe, like maybe your bag of holding or portable hole, or maybe a paradox box which you store in a bag of holding in order to prevent people from getting at your encyclopedia collection (extradimensional spaces cease functioning when stored inside other extradimensional spaces, but that's not a huge burden in this case, it just means you need to pull your box out of storage when you need to open it). But that might not be good enough for you. A glove of storing can store one object as a free action, shrinking it down and hiding it inside the glove. Sadly, you can only store one item, and your encyclopedia set might count as more than one for its purpose, even if you bind them together with a belt or something. And you can't wear more than one glove of storing at a time. The good news is that you don't have to be wearing the gloves in order for them to function, or you can split up the gloves among different people so that you hold one volume and then your monkey or imp familiar holds another. If shrink item is used on a book, it shrinks to 1/16th of its normal dimensions, reduced from a book 12 inches tall, 8 inches wide and 1 inch thick to 3/4ths of an inch tall, 1/2 an inch wide and 1/16th of an inch thick, making it something that could comfortably sit on a quarter or d20, and shrink item can be used to make the item have a cloth-like consistency to make it more malleable. Shrink item can even be made permanent, so the caster can grow or shrink the item as needed or desired. Only one problem: shrink item specifically shrinks one non-magical item, and a set of magical encyclopedias is neither. Fortunately, there is a way to bypass that. A security belt not only makes it harder to steal things from you, but can once per day shrink an item down as the shrink item spell. Since the wording is "as the shrink item spell" and not "cast shrink item", it means that it uses the shrink item effect while superseding the spell's restriction (size limit, nonmagical) with its own (just the size limit). The intent seems to be that you shrink things down and put them in the belt, but the rules don't specifically mention anything further, so there's nothing stopping you from shrinking an item and then doing what you wish. Since it's a once-per-day power you're going to need multiple belts (and someone else like a familiar to wear some of them if you don't want to take yours off because you like the long-term effects of your own belt), but you can shrink down every encyclopedia volume you have (though sadly, since it doesn't cast the spell, you can't make it permanent, so they only last up to five days or so). It's probably easier and cheaper to just have your DM let you shrink magical items or wait for a book to come up with a spell that does so, but you do what you have to. You now have several tiny cloth swatches containing the sum total of every spell known to wizards. Now, if you don't want to lose them, you keep them with you, then think like a four-year old and stash them some place no pickpockets whatsoever are going to put their hands. This is not as terrible of an idea as it sounds. 1) A blessed book is waterproof and presumably resilient to other things as well. 2) Prestidigitation is a spell that does many minor things among which is clean a cubic foot of items per round. It's also a spell any wizard can cast and as a cantrip it can be cast at-will. 3) There are numerous items that sustain a creature with no need for food or drink, among which is the ring of sustenance, favored by casters since it also allows them to refresh their spells after only two hours of rest. If you do not need to eat or drink, your systems are probably relatively... inert. Your DM is unable to get to your spellbooks without bad-touching your wizard. If you require further security, invest in a chastity belt with an arcane lock, requiring thieves to spend several turns clearing the way. You can even make them spend turns checking for traps. Should the spell expire or be dismissed, things become... interesting. Rules for shrinking and enlarging creatures imply that you can't use them to explode your way out of things or kill creatures through growth. And it is highly unlikely that casters will have line of effect to your spellbooks unless you're playing some very interesting games. Watch out for antimagic fields though. If you don't want to deal with shrink item, recall that a portable hole is a 6 foot diameter, 10 foot deep hole that can be folded up into a swatch of cloth the size of a pocket handkerchief of negligible weight, and when folded up has a cloth-like consistency, making it useful for storing things close to your person.
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Mar 17, 2013 22:23
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This is probably a good time to mention how theft works in Pathfinder. Sleight of Hand is the skill used for doing a variety of things such as feats of legerdemain, hiding small objects on your body, or lifting an object from a person. The restriction is that you use it to lift a "small" object, and the game uses the example of light weapons or easily concealable ranged weapons such as darts and slings as small objects you can hide on your person, but the game is rather vague about how you determine if something is a small object. This would not be a problem were it not for the fact that the game has a host of creatures who are much larger or much smaller compared to a human. So if a "small object" refers to you, you could probably steal a fairy's pants without them noticing, but if "small object" refers to the target, you could smoothly lift a dagger larger than you are if you go after a titan. If small object is an absolute thing, then there are no such things as titan thieves, and fairy thieves can steal anything from other fairies. Regardless of sizing issues, there is one way to protect yourself from most pickpockets- roll initiative! Sleight of Hand can't be used in combat if the target is aware of your presence. If you want to steal something in combat from someone who is aware of your presence, you need to use the steal maneuver. If you have a free hand, succeed on a check and the object isn't heavily secured, you jack their item. On the subject of stealing, here's an interesting feat: Agile Tongue. It's a racial feat designed for the Grippli, a race of little frog dudes.  Adorable little frog dudes  Agile Tongue does what it says, giving your frog-man a 10 foot long tongue with enough agility to pick up items weighing five pounds or less, make Sleight of Hand checks, steal from or disarm opponents and make melee touch attacks. Due to the wording of the feat, while it may be designed for moving five pound or lighter objects normally, there are no restrictions on Sleight of Hand, disarm or steal other than what the abilities normally have, allowing you to grab whatever the hell your opponent is carrying, even if it's a titan with a hammer bigger than you are (assuming you succeed on the check, of course). The Sleight of Hand function brings up the mental image of just how a frog manages to stealthily stand 10 feet away from you, stick out its tongue, reach around in your pockets and then steal your keys without you noticing, but that is only the beginning.  Since you can use your tongues to deliver touch attacks, you can also use them to deliver spells that require your touch. A grippli cleric gains a distinct tactical advantage by standing in the back row and licking allies to deliver healing abilities and buff spells such as bull's strength or shield of faith. A grippli can even go full on BattleToads and use its tongue to deliver touch attack spells like shocking grasp or frigid touch.  Then there are the times when you have to deliver a touch attack spell to a zombie or gelatinous cube  .But maybe your DM is a dick and won't you play a two foot tall little frog dude. Don't worry, we have a solution- be a human and take the Racial Heritage feat, which allows you to pick a humanoid race as one of your ancestors and count as both races for the purpose of game mechanics, including what feats you're eligible for. Then go hang out with the rest of your mutant brotherhood.  As you may have noticed, Racial Heritage has some weird effects based on the fact that it lets you take any racial feat that does not have a specific racial trait requirement. Among the things you can pick up: -The ability to flip the gently caress out at Levar Burton or bite everyone like an infant throwing a tantrum -Fully functioning wings -An undead animal companion that recovers swiftly from any injury, and the ability to drink blood or befriend the poo poo out of people -A tail that can hit people and even carry weapons, or other functioning wings -Spell Resistance or increased durability -The ability to planeshift -The ability to turn into a fox or waste a gigantic number of feats on spell-like abilities and growing fluffy tails -The ability to spit poison -The ability to swim through dirt and even lava -The ability to live without breathing -A prehensile tail -The ability to breathe water Also worth mentioning is that Pathfinder condensed the creature types, making elementals a subset of outsiders, and giants a subset of humanoids. Thus with Racial Heritage, you can pick up tremorsense through your stone giant ancestry. Let's make a grippli rogue and have our frog be an excellent thief with an amazing tongue! So, how does our frog mutant go about stealing things? Steal works like most Combat Maneuvers, in this case the would-be thief makes a Combat Maneuver check using the thief's Combat Maneuver Bonus (CMB) against the target's Combat Maneuver Defense (CMD). If the would-be thief has an empty and and the check is successful, the thief swipes the item. This may seem simple, as Pathfinder's Combat Maneuver system was an attempt to simplify streamline the wonky 3e system before it, but unfortunately it went horribly wrong. The basic Combat Maneuver Check is 1d20 + your CMB bonus = 1d20 + Base Attack Bonus + Strength modifier + special size bonus + miscellaneous bonuses The basic Combat Maneuver Defense is equal to 10 + your Base Attack Bonus + Strength modifier + Dexterity Modifier + special size bonus + miscellaneous bonuses The size bonus is based on the character's size, with Medium creatures like humans having a +0 modifier, and it scaling with size from +1, +2, +4, to +8 at Colossal, and down with size from -1, -2, -4, to -8 at Fine. Those of you capable of doing basic pattern recognition might have already noticed one discrepancy- the Combat Maneuver Bonus check uses one score for calculations (Strength) while the Combat Maneuver Defense check uses two (Strength, Dexterity) with an "and" rather than an "or". Conceptually, few creatures with high Strength have high Dexterity and vice versa, but there are always exceptions. High-end outsiders in general tend to have all around high ability scores- a balor has good Strength and Dexterity, with an end result that its Combat Maneuver Bonus is +33 while its Combat Maneuver Defense is 54, meaning that if two balors fought, neither could do anything to the other since both require a roll of 21 on a 20 sided die to succeed. The Balor Abyss-Wide Wrestling Federation is doomed before it even starts. Breaking it down further, your base attack bonus is a function of your hit dice or level- a Good bonus scales at a rate equal to your hit dice/levels, while an Average attack bonus scales at a rate of three points every four dice/levels, and a Poor attack bonus scales at a rate equal to one point every two dice/levels. Our rogue has an Average bonus, while late-game enemies like Outsiders and Dragons not only have a Good bonus, but also tend to have more hit dice than a character has levels- all things equal, our grippli rogue would be behind 5 points just based on BAB differences (20 levels of average is +15, while 20 levels of good is +20), and things are nowhere near equal at higher levels. Making matters worse, your combat maneuver bonus is normally Strength-based, and grippli have a Strength penalty because they're skinny frogs. You can spend a feat on Agile Maneuvers to make your CMB Dex-based and use the grippli's Dexterity bonus, but that means you're down a feat. Even then, grippli are Small, and thus take a -1 penalty to Combat Maneuver Bonus checks and their Combat Maneuver Defense. Large and larger creatures get a bonus to those same checks, and at high levels almost every enemy that isn't a humanoid with class levels is larger than a humanoid. Dragons, outsiders, magical beasts even undead can have Colossal representatives with a +8 bonus. They also tend to have larger Strength scores than you have Strength or Dexterity, and sometimes both are higher than anything you can cook up under normal conditions. It's an uphill battle. The other big thing with Combat Maneuvers is that despite being designed as a system that anyone can use, it's really a bad idea for anyone to use them. By default, making a Combat Maneuver provokes an Attack of Opportunity, meaning your enemy gets a free chance to hit you in the face for daring to interfere with them. You can prevent this by investing in the "Improved [MANEUVER NAME]" feats, which prevent you from provoking AoOs and also grant you a +2 bonus on your CMB when performing that particular maneuver. Unfortunately for the Talented Mr. Grippli, Improved Steal has a prerequisite- Combat Expertise, a feat that lets you sacrifice your attack bonus (and subsequently your CMB) for defensive bonuses (which also boosts your CMD). Unfortunately in 3e/PF, defense does not end fights- it merely prolongs them, and in most situations it's better to hit people more accurately so you can end the fight sooner. So not only is this a feat that the grippli rogue won't use, it also requires an Intelligence score of 13 or more. So we're three feats down and now we can make an attempt to steal without getting punched in the face, and our chances of success have moved from "miserable" to "mediocre". Problem is that even if we successfully steal something from our enemy with our free hand, we didn't do it stealthily, and we didn't do anything else this turn. The solution to that is... more feats. Greater Steal means that the target won't know what happened until the end of the fight or until the target attempts to use the item, while Quick Steal lets you steal something and fight on the same turn. So that's five feats down (out of ten) and while Quick Steal may let you steal and fight in the same turn, it does not let you steal and fight well on the same turn, since you spent your best attack to make a steal attempt and must use your considerably less-good attacks to hurt your foes, made even more less-good because you're a rogue, not a fighter (and since you needed a free hand to steal, you probably aren't wielding two weapons to double your damage each round barring you having more than two arms). But hey, rogues have rogue talents, gained at each even level, some of which can be spent to subsidize your feat requirements. Combat Swipe lets you get Improved Steal, and Combat Trick can be used to pick up one of the other combat feats. And what's this? Weapon Snatcher lets you use your skill with Sleight of Hand in place of your Combat Maneuver Bonus on disarm maneuvers. Thus instead of making a 1d20 + Strength (or Dex) + BAB + size modifier + miscellaneous bonuses check for CMB, you can make a Sleight of Hand check of 1d20 + level + 3 + Dex + miscellaneous bonuses, dropping your size penalty and increasing the chances of you coming up with bonus like a +5 Sleight of Hand bonus from gloves of larceny. Something of a move in your favor then... except for the fact that it uses your skill at stealing things to disarm weapons, not steal items, so that's five different feats you have to pick up if you want disarm and fight in the same round without getting punched in the face (well, three, since you already have Combat Expertise and don't need Agile Maneuvers). But whatever, we're committed to this, the Talented Mr. Grippli is going to steal the poo poo out of things.  We're a level 20 grippli rogue. We've spent the following feats: -Weapon Finesse -Agile Maneuvers -Agile Tongue -Combat Expertise -Improved Steal -Greater Steal -Quick Steal -Improved Disarm -Greater Disarm -Quick Disarm That's 10 out of 10, but we can also spend rogue talents on Weapon Finesse, a Combat Trick, Improved Steal and maybe some other feats via our advanced Rogue Talents. We're probably going to want Skill Focus (Sleight of Hand) in there as well. We've got 15 BAB from our 20 levels, and let's say we've got 28 Dexterity (16 base + 2 race + 4 level bonuses + 6 item) for a +9 bonus. That makes our Steal CMB= 15 BAB + 9 Dex + 4 feats -1 size = +27, and our Disarm Sleight of Hand bonus= 20 ranks + 3 class skill + 9 Dex + 5 item + 6 feat = +43. Now let's go find some level-appropriate foes. Let's see... Red Dragon Great Wyrm, winged world-ending spawn of destruction, tor linnorm... ah, Thanatotic Titan. We can make a disarm attempt using our tongue at a +43 bonus against a CMD of 60, which means 20% of the time we can successfully use our little tongue to grab a 100 pound battle axe that's larger than we are. The other 80% of the time, we do jack poo poo and remain within 10 feet of a army-killing monster with a 30 foot reach using a 100 pound battle axe that's larger than we are.  Now if we wanted to increase our odds we could pick up miscellaneous bonuses to skills and attack rolls such as luck bonuses, insight bonuses and morale bonuses from spells and magic items. If we wanted to increase our odds of successfully stealing things even further, we'd have to completely overhaul our character concept. First, replace our average BAB with good BAB by rolling something like a barbarian or fighter, and pounding our Strength up with levels, race (we can still have our Agile Tongue as a human with Racial Heritage), items, and maybe even stuff like sorcerer bloodlines. We pay our drat feat taxes (the fighter hurts less when doing this) and pick up our respective tricks- fighters have weapon training and weapon focus to up attack bonuses while a barbarian can just flat-out add your class level to one maneuver check per rage. We use enlarge person and the like to bulk up and increase our CMB and CMD. We can pump our CMB into the 50s or 60s, proving that if you want to steal something in the heat of battle and not get spotted, the best way to do so isn't to be a light and lithe little rogue, but a berserk twenty foot tall mountain of muscle screaming in fury. They'll never see you coming. Of course, even after we've devoted a pile of feats and character resources into being able to swipe poo poo with our tongues, we run into one tiny little problem... there's nothing worth taking. The titan had a weapon, but nothing that you could affect with the Steal maneuver- and the titan was something of a rarity at higher levels. Dragons and other monstrous land-shaking beasts are not only huge and possess ridiculous CMDs, but also generally don't fight with manufactured weapons and don't carry much in the way of personal belongings that could swing the fight if stolen away- you can't use disarm on a creature with fangs and claws. And even if you could disarm or steal something, while you're doing that you're not dealing HP damage and ending the fight, while also remaining well within the reach of the creature's own weaponry, leaving it free to chew on you instead (not only are you giving less than you're receiving, you probably don't have as much HP either). Thus if you want to take something from opponents in a high level game, about the most efficient way is just to beat them into the ground and loot their bodies.  This is the fundamental problem with Combat Maneuvers in Pathfinder. If you want to do them well, you have to sink a huge chunk of resources into doing them, and doing them leaves you exposed in the process for a negligible benefit, assuming it works at all- each maneuver has one or more ways to completely no-sell it through some form of defense or trait. If you can't use them, you've wasted a bunch of character resources on an attempt at making combat more interesting and memorable when you should have focused on hitting things for more damage for maximum efficiency. And if you've spent all those resources, you're probably going to want to use that maneuver as often as possible to get your money's worth, and risk turning your character into a one button gimmick. Pity about all the things that can stop you: -Bull Rush doesn't work on anything much bigger than you are, and it's just going to move dudes around if you don't have an interesting hazard to stuff them into (and when fighting a monster on its home turf, the environment is probably more dangerous to you than the monster) -Dirty Trick requires that you tailor your trick to the environment and the monster, and while it isn't as easy to no-sell as the rest of the powers, it can still be a hassle if your DM doesn't want to play ball. -Disarm doesn't work on anything not carrying a weapon, and even if you do disarm them, they can still pick up their weapons if you don't do something about that (good luck catching swords larger than you are). -Drag moves dudes around, can't be used on really big foes, and can't be used to drag foes through dangerous terrain -Grapple is completely negated by freedom of movement and similar abilities and can't be used on much bigger foes. It's also the most complicated maneuver in the game, best demonstrated by the two pages of flow charts. -Overrun can't be used against much bigger foes and requires room to charge and maneuver, which can be pretty dangerous -Reposition is like Drag and has similar restrictions on size and hazardous terrain -Steal requires that the target have gear other than weapons and that the gear be worth stealing, as we have demonstrated -Sunder requires that the target have weapons or gear valuable enough to make a difference, but smashing such gear means you have to repair it after battle if you want to sell it as loot -Trip can't be used on much bigger foes, or foes without legs or flying enemies The last one in particular is interesting because of a long bit of Murphy's Rules-esque kerfuffling. See, D&D 4th Edition uses an abstract power system for delivering its various status effects and conditions, so a cleric and a fighter might both make attack rolls, and on a hit they do damage and knock the target prone, but a fighter might do it with a melee weapon that hits the target's AC while a cleric compels the target's will and do mental damage. This system annoyed a bunch of people, because not only did they feel as though it made all the classes the same, but that it smashed verisimilitude- how the hell could you knock an ooze or snake prone? This ignores that 3e allowed the same things to happen by virtue of not explicitly disallowing the use of trip mechanics on oozes and snakes and whatnot, and that there could be different interpretations based on the situation that use different specifics to create the same general situation of "creature can't move until it takes an action and regains its bearings." Paizo decided they'd learn from that and create the most verisimilitudinous edition, so oozes and snakes and other creatures without legs or creatures that are currently flying are immune to being tripped. And the day was saved forever. Except... well, they're specifically immune to being tripped, not to being knocked prone. Thus, you can freely do things such as... say... turn on speak with animals (which any class can get by being a gnome) then walk up to a snake and yell "ON THE GROUND, MOTHERFUCKER!" and that snake will go prone. It'll take a penalty to its melee attacks, won't be able to use ranged attacks, have a penalty to AC against melee but a bonus to AC against ranged, and won't be able to move normally without standing up, an action that will allow its nearby enemies to get a free shot at it, reaching the same end state as if it were tripped. Even if it's an ooze that's immune to mental effects as well as trip attacks, you can hit it with rocks, or knock it over with grease or any one of a half dozen other abilities. It's not even a complete ban on physical attacks, you can still punt the thing or just run the fucker over. Or you can shapeshift into a critter immune to being tripped and lie prone of your own volition. You just can't trip it. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 07:07
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Ostensibly, Pathfinder is a game that offers a variety of character classes each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses that can work together to solve any problem. But much like in Animal Farm, while all classes are equal in the rules, some are more equal than others. As a descendent of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Pathfinder has inherited the raw power and versatility of spell-casting classes. Of the casting classes, they can be divided roughly into two camps- spontaneous casters, which know a small number of spells but can cast them in any combination up to a certain number of times per day per spell level, and prepared (or Vancian) casters, who prepare their spells each day in exact terms but are free to change them up each time according to the spells they learn/are able to draw upon. Spontaneous casters theoretically have more spells per day, but as we've mentioned before, a prepared caster can usually keep pace with higher level spells, class features and items. Thus for any given problem, a prepared caster is best-equipped to deal with it, and can probably solve it within a day or two. There are four prepared casters with all nine levels of spells- cleric, druid, witch, and wizard, and while the first three all have their charms and their uses, if you're looking for sheer problem-solving ability it's probably the wizard that narrowly claws its way to the top of the pile. Well, how bad can it get? I'm glad you asked. Let's build a wizard. But let's not roll up just any wizard, let's have fun with it. Specifically, let's create a wizard who lives the good life, having fun and avoiding unpleasant things whenever possible. Starting with ability scores, wizards prioritize Intelligence above all things, and it's not bad to have a good Constitution modifier for Fortitude saves and extra HP, and a good Dexterity modifier for better Reflex saves and AC, plus Initiative and some touch attacks, followed by Wisdom just to not bump it. Charisma isn't hugely important, but it's not a bad thing to have some of it either if you're down with planar binding, while Strength can be pretty much dumped entirely. For race, the most important thing is we pick one that boosts Intelligence. Very few other things actually matter. There are some races with interesting traits, but we can set those aside for the moment. On to our Arcane Bond. Now, as mentioned, bonding with an object is nice and all because who would say no to a free spell of your highest spell level? But carrying around a wand or weapon sounds kind of like work, so what about a nice familiar? Animal Archive introduced archetypes for animal companions and familiars where you could pick an archetype that replaces certain default traits and features with other ones. For our wizard, we need only one word: Valet. Because who doesn't want a monkey who makes you breakfast in bed? Seriously, you have your own Alfred as a class feature. With that settled, it's now time to choose our Arcane School. Spells can be divided into eight schools of magic (well, nine if you include Universalist). Abjuration: Spells that deal with stuff like protection and countering magic Conjuration: Spells that deal with space and matter, such as creating things, summoning things, or teleporting things Divination: Spells that deal with information and detection Enchantment: Spells that deal with mental manipulation Evocation: Spells that create energy Illusion: Spells that deal with deception and shadows Necromancy: Spells that deal with souls, death, and the undead Transmutation: Spells that deal with altering and changing matter and form As a specialist mage, you choose one school as your arcane school, and two more as your prohibited schools. You can prepare one extra spell of your school per spell slot each day, and gain a scaling set of features, including abilities gained at levels 1 and 8. Your prohibited schools require two spell slots to prepare, and you're not as good with them. You can also choose to be a Universalist wizard and have neither prohibited nor favored schools, which isn't a good idea because you don't get extra spell slots and the level 1 feature is just terrible. So, what school to focus on, and what to prohibit? Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination and Transmutation all contain incredibly useful and powerful spells, and prohibiting them is generally a terrible idea. Specializing in them isn't a bad idea, and it comes down to what school benefit you want. Since we're devoted to being generally work-averse, having other people around to do the heavy lifting sounds like a fine idea- Conjuration it is. Unfortunately the acid dart power is pretty dull for an ability, so it's best to replace it with one of the subschools such as the useful teleportation subschool. Choosing Infernal Binder sacrifices the useless acid dart and useful teleport ability of the school in exchange for an imp familiar for free at level 7 and prohibiting the caster from being chaotic or good in alignment- somehow I get the feeling that that won't be much of a loss. Alfred just got better. For the two prohibited schools, it's a choice between Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, and Necromancy. Enchantment is useful but gets blocked by many creatures who are immune to emotions, charms, compulsions and mind-affecting effects, Evocation has a ton of spells that are just direct damage (though the ones that aren't can be interesting), Illusion can be pierced by certain types of magic and is limited by your imagination, and Necromancy can also be blocked by various creature types. Given that opposition research can be taken at level 9 or 10 to regain one of the schools, and Evocation and Necromancy aren't really that noteworthy until you get higher level spells, let's go with them. Besides, if you really need Evocation at a higher level, you can always cheat. Dumping Enchantment and Necromancy, then picking up Necromancy later is also a perfectly valid tactic. As far as skills go, we have high Intelligence and Intelligence grants skill points retroactively. So we have a ton of skills. Spellcraft and Knowledge are our big go-to skills, plus Fly at higher levels, but the rest of the points can be spent on whatever (and used by our familiar). For feats, I'm not going to go too in-depth on them, but basically we get feats that improve our summoning power, our ability to craft, and a few generic staples like spell penetration and improved initiative. Plus discoveries like Opposition Research to make being a specialist even more awesome, Fast Study to provide that spontaneous casting feeling, and True Name at level 15 to whistle up a special friend to do our chores. One of those crafting feats is going to be Craft Wondrous Item, because Wondrous Items make up a staggering chunk of the game. A few things worth noting about crafting magic items in Pathfinder compared to previous editions- Crafting no longer costs XP, just money (half the amount it would cost to buy it). At the end of the time you take to craft it, you make a Spellcraft check based on the level of the item. Not having prerequisites doesn't mean you can't make the item, it just means that the Spellcraft DC on the final item is increased. And Spellcraft is both Intelligence-based and a class skill for wizards, which means we have it in spades. There are few things we can't make. You can only have one item per slot, but you can add the capabilities of one item to another by increasing the cost of one of them by 50% (usually, this means adding the cost of the cheaper item onto the more expensive one). Making an item slot-less doubles its cost. And since our familiar is a valet, it shares our crafting abilities and doubles our item creation output. This means we can get some drat fine magic items out of this. Now, we could go into detail about how combat usually involves turning the battlefield into a warped hellscape, debilitating our foes and then zerg rushing them with an army of souped-up minion poo poo-kickers, but why ruin the good vibes? Let's think about the good times... what can magic do for you? Well, right out of the gate, you can do your laundry with a snap of your fingers, or have your imp do it for you. You can comfortably endure the hottest places in the world (but not the coldest ones) regardless of what you're wearing. You don't have to do your own chores or carry your own possessions. You can make yourself heard or look like anyone. You can mitigate aches and get seriously buzzed. Later on, you can make people like you, or make people really like you, and speak with anyone. You can climb really well or swim really well. You can travel in style riding a tireless steed or chariot that can eventually travel over any terrain without slowing down. When you're done traveling for the day, you can settle down in your own house (fun fact: the house conjured by this spell is made out of whatever materials are common in the area, and the exact process is vague enough that there's no restrictions other than having the space available, so by targeting this spell in the right area you can build a house out of gingerbread or sofas or something and it'll be as solid as stone). Now that we're into the mid-level spells, our wizard can fly all day, and is now capable of existing in any environment, from the highest mountains to the deepest seas to the vacuum of outer space. We can crew our own ship or just laugh off travel time altogether. This is also the point where we can plop down some cash on permanent spells so we can speak all languages, detect magic, read magic and see through the darkness. Since we're in the market for spending money on sweet power-ups, we might as well shop around for items. If we build them ourselves, we save half-off on the cost, and Alfred the imp familiar possesses cooperative crafting and all our crafting capabilities meaning we now craft twice as fast (make a Cespenar impression at your own peril). Well, for starters our wizard no longer requires food or drink and survives on only two hours of sleep a day, and can also protect mental privacy, walk on water, go invisible, block foes, get a pile of minions, always find a party, or just flat-out no-sell force spells or grapples and other forms of movement denial. Now, there's the problem of the fact that we've mentioned something like ten rings and have only two ring slots, but a few things of note: The first of which is the fact that a meridian belt costs next to nothing and lets us wear four rings, but only use two at a time. The more important part is the fact that we can bolt on additional properties like some sort of unholy Megaman/Katamari hybrid by increasing the cost by half, so a 50% cost boost to a 2,500 gp ring of sustenance is nothing when bolted onto a 40,000 gp ring of freedom of movement, especially when we're only spending half that if we build it ourselves. Even at a 50% cost hike, half off means we're still only paying 75% of market price. True, it'll take us a few months to build our bad boy, but we already have Alfred doubling our crafting rate, and that's just the start of what we can do. By goofing around with our four semi-active slots, maybe we want a combat ring that defends and heals us, or a utility ring to move objects with our mind. With rings mostly settled, we can now move into Wondrous Items and see what sort of things can make our lives more magical. A Meridian Belt is but a pittance to bolt onto a better belt so we can have access to more magical rings we might not always need. As to the core of our belt, it's almost certainly an attribute booster to bolster our Constitution and Dexterity modifier, to better survive whatever comes our way. Strength is not really necessary, as it's cheap enough to triple our carrying capacity on the off chance we want to do real work. Past that and it's just novelty item time. Maybe we want to survive an extra 100 points of damage a day, or be able to stuff ourselves through a cat door, or maybe we just want to ride a horse better or hang on to our poo poo. There's not a huge amount of vital belt options for a wizard. Moving onto body slot items and it's a different story. Now, you might think to yourself, "since I am a Grandmaster Archmage, the best possible item I could get for myself is a Robe of the Archmagi because it has my name on it." You'd be wrong. The best possible caster body item isn't a robe, it's a kimono. This Kimono, in fact. Both offer the same resistance bonus to saving throws, but a robe of the archmage also offers a bonus to AC and spell resistance. Unfortunately by the time you can afford it, 19 Spell Resistance can be overcome by a sneeze from level-appropriate enemies, and +5 to AC isn't much when you can already just spend a 1st level spell on mage armor for +4 AC for most of the day, especially when most enemy attacks will breach your AC regardless of how much you spent on it, unless you're really good at AC investment (and thus are subsequently really bad at anything useful). That leaves the kimono- while the robe grants a +2 bonus on caster level checks to beat Spell Resistance, the Otherworldly Kimono offers a +4 bonus on caster level checks period, which means not only does it blow the robe out of the water on punching through SR, it can also aid you in things like dispelling magic or breaking curses. Not only that, but it also comes with the once a day ability to tell a target to  with no saving throw offered, removing them from the battlefield for at least a round, if not several, as you trap them among a field of cherry blossoms  , which also boost your saves and caster level check results even further. If you're anticipating a powerful enemy, there's nothing stopping you from banishing a non-threat into your pocket for the added boost to your power- send them on a sakura-viewing picnic and tell them to enjoy themselves for the next ten minutes while you benefit from those sweet bonuses. And it costs less than the robe to boot.As to other items to strap on to our fabulous kimono, we might want to consider a robe of stars for reasons that will be explained later, while other items might be a robe of arcane heritage if you're involved in Eldritch Heritage shenanigans (actual sorcerers can use it to pick up their capstone powers far earlier), or a fantastically low-cost robe of infinite twine because some days you're just gonna need more rope. Most DMs aren't petty about your spell component pouches, but if they are then the robe of components has you covered (literally). Moving to the torso slot, we're in luck! There is nothing in here we actually want. All the more reason to buy a pile of quick runner's shirts and swap them out after battles. Well, I suppose there's not aging, if that's your thing. Eye slot items are a similar wasteland for a conjuration wizard. I suppose we could find secret doors or see what our familiar sees or look back in time. Truesight goggles are useful, but ridiculously expensive, and the same but less-so for eyes of the dragon. Annihilation spectacles are great, but are a transmuter item, not a conjurer item. Oh well, more money to waste on other stupid poo poo. Moving on to the feet slot, and oh hey, there's not much of interest in here either. You could swim through the sea and walk on lava, but there are other ways to accomplish that. Boots of speed are a generic way to get out of dodge quickly, though more appropriate for a fighting character. So not much to spend on other than the ability to levitate, move faster, ignore terrain, traverse ice and survive a fall from orbit. Hand slot items continue the theme of "there is nothing of interest for a wizard except novelty items." But hey, these ones are actually sort of interesting. We have novelty cantrips we don't need to waste slots preparing, along with the ability to palm our junk and work stone like clay and leave calling cards like the Family Circus kids. Are you not thrilled to have the powers of the cosmos at your fingertips? It's a good thing we saved all that money by only buying cheap stuff for the previous items, because we are going to spend ourselves into the ground on the next few areas. For the head slot, a solid base is the iron circlet of guarded souls, which not only prevents us from having our soul sucked out through our nostrils, but also possibly makes us completely immune to 90% of all divination spells. This is because it nukes anything that nondetection has a chance of stopping, and since it's phrased as "divination spells such as" it means nondetection normally has a chance to block just about any divination short of discern location while the helm changes that chance to 100%. Note that "divination" is a category that not only includes things like detecting your thoughts or alignment, or spying on you with crystal balls, but also spells like see invisibility or true seeing. One minor difficulty is that if you die with your hat on, people can't bring you back with anything short of a wish/miracle until they remove your hat, but just try to not die (and if anyone actually kills you, it is only natural for them to want to remove a hat such as yours). As far as other items to bolt on, why not double your chances against mind-affecting spells and gaze attacks, disguise yourself or block a critical hit? You can even make other people like you more. (While not something our wizard will ever use, I would also like to point out that a grappler's mask is pretty much a fantasy luchador mask. Also, there is a mask of  )Moving into the headband section, and there's no way we're walking out of here without buying something. A headband of intelligence is the bare minimum here, but maybe we want one that boosts our Wisdom and/or Charisma as well, or maybe we want one that lets us fly at-will or boots our shapeshifting abilities. Maybe we want to be able to walk forever and ignore blindness, shake off conditions, keep people from stealing our hat or resolve alignment issues. Moving into the neck slot items and there's a nice pile of junk to buy. Major question to answer is- do we care about boosting AC, and what do we think about the ability to travel to any plane we want at-will? AC really isn't that great of an investment at level 20, but it's still an option. For starters, let's become immune to poison and disease, and then make it so we can breath in space and ignore gases. Hmm... you know what else might be nice? Another ring slot, putting us at five rings total, three of which are active at any one time. Petrification sucks, so let's ignore that, and ignore swarms as well. I don't like curses either. Heck, why not entertain our friends at parties by doing impersonations? We can also tell dragons to gently caress off. Also, you can totally screw with sorcerer bloodlines and Eldritch Heritage, but that's not something for this build. (Also, remember that magic helm I mentioned earlier? Compare it to an amulet of proof against detection and location, which is ostensibly supposed to do the same thing, except the helm costs 5000 gp less and is almost 100% effective, while the amulet doesn't offer much of a resistance by the time you can afford it). Moving on to our shoulder slot and we get into the last major purchase for our wizard. Since we already have our kimono, there's no real need for us to to get a cloak of resistance, there's not a whole lot left. There's flight if you haven't picked it up already, but other than that there's not much to buy. A cloak of displacement means 20% of most attackers will just fail to hit you altogether and completely blocks most sneak attacks from rogues and similar characters. We can befriend better, endure environments and resist fatigue and energy drain while healing faster, and sleep like a magical butterfly. For a paltry sum we can even boost our strength by 8 for the purpose of carrying things, and when combined with our triple capacity belt means we can lift a grown man with one hand like it ain't a thing, and medal in the Olympics if we put our back into it. This is assuming Strength is our dump score. If it's strictly average, we can bench 900 lbs. Cast a few 1st or 2nd level spells on ourselves and we can lift a literal ton or two for the next twenty minutes.Next would be our wrist slot item, and fortunately for us all there's nothing much of interest to a caster here either. True, there's bracers of armor, but AC isn't really an area where a wizard wins out. There's also the bracers of falcon's aim, which beats out the lesser bracers of archery by a mile. I suppose we could deflect arrows or use Glibness once per day. That just leaves us with the slotless items, but I've already written a large amount of  so far, so that can wait until later.TL;DR Thus Far- A 20th level wizard has 880,000 gp, but can craft items to basically double that in value. Since we can combine items into the same slot with only an increase in cost on the cheaper items, we can consolidate a truly ridiculous amount of power into our wizard Next Time: We get into high-level spells and discover that the bullshit train has no brakes
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Mar 25, 2013 07:16
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When we last left our wizard, we had just sunk about 85% of our wealth into hand-crafting a pile of magical toys, chiefly by exploiting a crafter's ability to play Katamari Damacy with magic item slots. There's a lot of words there, but here's a brief refresher of what the wizard can now do. Things the wizard can ignore: -Food -Water -Air -Sleep -Force spells -Detection and divination spells -Poison -Disease -The effects of age -Spell components -Sneak attacks -Objects weighing less than 600 lbs -Petrification -Swarms -Dragons -Blindness -Terminal Velocity -Most climates Things the wizard can travel across without problems: -Long trips -Difficult terrain -Ice -Water -Lava -Air -The planes -Small openings -Vacuum -Thousands of miles Things the wizard has boosted just because: -Resting speed -Regular speed -Resistance to fatigue, negative energy, curses, gaze attacks and mind-affecting abilities -Any skill, including the ability to disguise oneself as anyone and befriend the poo poo out of people -Healing ability -At-will telekinesis and levitation -Free rope Now let's start factoring in our higher level spells. Given any particular problem, there's probably a spell that solves it. I could go list off some examples, but that's not as exciting, so let's take a look at some of the big ticket items. A conjuration wizard can have a portable pleasure palace as soon as level 13, providing ample opportunity for lounging your days away in a hot tub while servants feed you grapes. 7th level spell slots also open up one other possibility: the Create Demiplane line of spells, because you're not truly a God Wizard without your own personal slice of heaven. The level 7 lesser version of the spell is at its most basic, just giving you a small pile of dirt or whatever floating in a void on the Astral or Ethereal Plane. It lasts for a day per caster level, or permanently if you're willing to plop down some cash. While the theory is nice enough, this really isn't the one you want to be using. The level 8 regular version of the spell, learned at level 15 is more interesting, since not only does it give you over triple the volume, but also allows you to cast the spell again on your plane in order to start throwing on different traits. The level 9 greater version of the spell, learned at level 17 is even better, again doubling the volume of your plane and allowing you to throw even more traits on it. Once you have this capability, the amount of stupid plane tricks you can pull off rises exponentially. If you just want to build your own personal pleasure palace, start by casting Create Greater Demiplane to create a temporary plane, then cast Create Greater Demiplane to give it the Enhanced Magic (Conjuration) or Enhanced Magic (Creation) traits, granting you a +2 bonus to your caster level while on your demiplane. Then you cast Create Greater Demiplane again for real this time, to get more space for your money. Once you've got your bigger plane, you make it permanent, then start applying traits. Making it Minor Positive Energy Dominant means you and your friends will heal to full health within ten to twenty minutes of arrival on the plane, and aren't in any danger of being over-healed- plus, the positive dominance of the plane means that everything is more  when you're on it. There's nothing that says you can't keep stacking traits, so you're free to make it so the plane enhances every type of magic you know of. When it comes to meddling with the Time trait, you can set it so time flows at twice the speed it does in the real world, meaning you could duck into your plane and rest up or craft in only half the time. Or you could set it so time flows at half the speed it does in the real world, and then use it to pass the time as you make a slow, one-way trip into the future. Or you could set it to Timeless, so various things like hunger, thirst or aging don't work while on the plane (though they are retroactive when you step off the plane), possibly giving yourself all the time needed to make magic items. Past that, you can make your plane Bountiful so it will always feed you, as well as making it Morphic so you can shape the ground with a thought to create whatever you need, and maybe set its gravity to half the normal rate so you can be lighter than ever, if you don't just set gravity to subjective to allow you to walk up walls and across ceilings. Then give it some alignment traits if you want people who don't think like you to be unwelcome, and set the shape, boundary and seasons as appropriate. Enjoy!Of course, there's nothing to stop you from building your own demiplanes for offensive purposes as well. Take your demiplane and make it fire dominant, earth dominant, water dominant and negative energy dominant- the spell may prohibit an area being both positive and negative dominant, but says nothing about mixing elemental types. Then double gravity and set it to timeless healing. End result is a plane that's got nothing but tightly packed tunnels of boiling water that eats away at any living creature inside it. If something wants to survive, it's got to be incredibly resistant to fire and negative energy as well as being able to survive without air- and if it wants to go anywhere it's going to need to be able to tunnel or otherwise plane-shift its way out. Double gravity is just there to make things twice as hard, and you can also just have it randomly alternate between blazing summer and freezing winter every so often just to be a dick. Timeless (healing) means that it can't heal naturally, and according to the universal monster rules, fast healing is an accelerated form of natural healing, and regeneration is a further subset of fast healing, so it's entirely possible that a Timeless (healing) zone shuts off regeneration. Slap a foe with plane shift and if your target fails a will save, they're going for a ride. Given that the characters with the cruddiest will saves also tend to be non-casters, then you can go wait a few minutes and plane shift in to loot some corpses (wait too long and the fire will probably get to them). If you're more of a peaceful sort, then you can cut out all of the traits that try to kill anything in your demiplane, and just set up a nice bountiful land with pleasant seasons and the like to serve as a sort of extradimensional prison for your foes incapable of planar travel. Of course, there are some enemies you can't kill no matter how badly you want to or how hard you try. Locking them away is the only solution, but you don't want to risk them getting out. Now, maybe you throw down some anti-planar travel magic like forbiddance and some anti-detection spells like private sanctum, but maybe you want to employ something even stronger. It's time for the Nuclear Option- Dead Magic. Dead magic zones are basically under a permanent antimagic field effect that also blocks any attempts to cross the boundary of the zone with things like teleportation or scrying spells. The only form of planar travel that can get you into a dead zone is a permanent planar portal. By casting Create Greater Demiplane, we can give the demiplane the Dead Magic trait, locking down all magic and preventing any transport in and out other than through a permanent portal. Unfortunately, the problem with a permanent portal is that even if you cover it with a doorway, there's still the chance that someone can get through (though, since a gate can be anywhere between 5 feet and 20 feet in diameter, if your subject is big enough you could set up a small enough portal that the prisoner can't get through, leaving your colossal target pawing at the man-sized doorway like a cat trying to get into a bedroom). Too much of a security risk, especially if you're keeping smaller prisoners. Now, the spell specifically mentions that if you set up a Dead Magic demiplane without a portal you will have no way out- truly, would it not be a noble sacrifice for your wizard to remain behind in order to imprison the greatest threat the world has ever known? Well, gently caress that, we have parties to attend. Now, if you want to close off a demiplane permanently while making sure that you're not in it, there are a number of ways to do it. You could have someone open a gateway a minute before you finish casting, then slowly back through it while keeping some part of your body inside your plane, possibly sacrificing it when the gate is snapped shut by the antimagic field. But why injure yourself? You could use a proxy, such as using a metamagic rod of familiar spell so that your familiar makes the sacrifice instead of you, and cherish that memory always  (then spend 200 gp to get a new familiar). But that's still involving some sort of sacrifice, which sounds like effort. You could use a proxy version of yourself to cast spells- while project image requires line of effect and thus necessitates having a gateway even if you could somehow make it last the six hours necessary for the casting (possibly through time shenanigans by setting the demiplane's time to "erratic" so you can have a round on one plane be equal to a day on another, though that's a whole can of worms by itself), shadow projection has no range or line of effect requirements, meaning you can send your shadow on a one-way trip and still come back alive-ish assuming you have someone on hand to stabilize you. But it's still confusing as to if spirits can travel through antimagic zones, so let's do something even simpler that requires no other spells save for the one we have.You need two things: The first is your future prison demiplane, henceforth referred to as the Hotel California. The second is a second demiplane you're happy hanging out on for a little while (it doesn't even have to be a permanent one you paid for), henceforth referred to as the Happiness Hotel. 1) After you've done most of the work on the Hotel California, go back over to the Happiness Hotel 2) From the Happiness Hotel, cast Create Greater Demiplane and create a permanent gate between the Happiness Hotel and the Hotel California. It requires you to be very familiar with the target location, and you are already very familiar with any demiplane you create. 3) Wander through the gateway into Hotel California 4) Have your prisoners checked into Hotel California if you haven't already 5) Make sure you've placed the finishing touches on the Hotel California, then cast Create Greater Demiplane to add the Dead Magic trait to the Hotel California 6) Walk back into the Happiness Hotel through the permanent gate (or if you've already turned the Hotel California into a flaming death trap, run  )7) From the Happiness Hotel, cast Create Greater Demiplane again and remove the permanent gate between the Happiness Hotel and the Hotel California End result is that you've locked something in an unreachable antimagic plane that will block pretty much anything short of a plot device (and arguably even most of those). I hope you aren't going to need it any time soon, because it's going to be incredibly difficult to get back. As an antimagic plane, it's one of those "immovable object" type situations, requiring an equally heavy-handed "unstoppable force" that counters its generic lock-out, or some sort of non-magical method of planar travel (a sign of a radically different game). About the only potential way back in without a plot device still involves a weird interpretation of the rules- dead magic zone rules specifically state that permanent portals function within them, and Create Greater Demiplane can create a permanent portal to a target plane, but while the dead magic zone doesn't close permanent portals that have already formed, does it prevent a permanent portal from forming once the zone is already established? Even if you can use Create Greater Demiplane to form a permanent portal into a dead magic plane, the spell requires you to be "very familiar" with the target plane, and hopefully the only people that qualify as "very familiar" with the Hotel California are its creator and its inhabitants. Of course, with a dead magic zone up and the portal down, no one else can check in, so it's not something you can easily modify or undo. But 22,500 gp is a small price to pay for what amounts to some ridiculous security. Only question remains is what happens to souls in a dead magic zone when they die- incorporeality is an extraordinary ability, so it functions in an antimagic zone, but can they go anywhere? If they can, then an enemy who dies in the Hotel California might be able to be raised somewhere else, but at least an enemy who can't die will have severe difficulty leaving. But maybe you don't want to use a demiplane as a target or a prison... maybe you have bigger ideas. Maybe you want to hold the world ransom for... One Million Gold Pieces  .But they laughed at you, didn't they? You'll show those fool... you'll show them all! Take Create Greater Demiplane, and put all the 10 foot cubes into a stack to create a demiplane that's 10 x 10 feet x 4000 feet or more, and can easily reach 10 x 10 x 4600 if you boost your caster level to 23 by letting your demiplane augment conjuration/creation spells and having an ioun stone that boost caster level, or even farther if you're willing to use some other options. Then use Create Greater Demiplane to double your demiplane's gravity and have it point towards one end of the stack. Then use spell again to grant your demiplane the water-dominant trait, filling it with water. Then you use the spell once more and open up a permanent gate from the bottom of the demiplane to a location on the material plane. Then what happens? The boring answer would be "absolutely nothing, because magic." The more interesting answer would be that we've created a demiplane that consists of an immense column of water under heavy gravity, thus high pressure. 4600 feet of water under double gravity is something like three hundred times the pressure of the atmosphere at sea level, and according to Bernoulli's principle when you have a pressure difference you're going to have a flow from the high pressure to the low pressure zone, and when the pressure difference is huge, the flow is pretty fast- like hundreds of miles per hour because the output of several Niagara Falls is being pumped through a 20 foot hole. Anything in the immediate vicinity is going to get the poo poo blasted out of it. Even more troubling is the fact that because the demiplane is water-dominant, one of its defining traits is that it's just full of water, and no matter how much you take out, there will always be more. Given that this is a permanent portal, if no one does anything you could possibly flood even the highest mountains inside of a month or two. Anything that can't survive in water is probably going to drown, and anything that can survive in water is going to have to deal with changes in salinity that most simply weren't designed to take. About the quickest option is to enter the demiplane and successfully use a big ticket spell to dismantle it, but the demiplane creator might cast Create Greater Demiplane again to turn the water column into a dead magic zone in the next six hours (three hours if time passes twice as fast in the demiplane, which probably makes the water flow even weirder). After that, the only option you have is to block off the water flow, or wait for the pressures to equalize, like when the portal is buried under 10,000 feet of water. If the material realm gate is up on a mountain top or strapped to a floating fortress, this could take a while (and since it's at a high altitude, the pressure difference is greater, so the water flows even faster). A plane full of water can be used offensively in other ways as well. Earlier we discussed how wizards use planar binding to hijack outsiders and hold them hostage until they agree to serve you, because wizards are dicks like that. Funny thing about outsiders: They don't need to eat or sleep, but they do need to breathe. So if you use planar binding to drop one into a room full of water and lock them in place with a magic circle + diagram & dimensional anchor, they're going to be stuck in place for several days, but only have a few minutes at most before they drown. Now, since the diagram is broken if anything disturbs it, maybe putting a line of powder at the bottom of a pool of water isn't the greatest idea. So maybe you carve a permanent magic circle into the rock, or maybe you just skip the water entirely and just set up shop in a vacuum. It's not as though it's going to bother you, after all. Set up a sign that states your terms (preferably as one-sided as possible) and if your outsider agrees, you get a new buddy. If they disagree, they die in a few minutes and that's that problem sorted. Decent way to assassinate a fairly high-ranking opponent. Now, having a demiplane to relax in is nice and all, except for that annoying problem of getting there. If you aren't going to leave a gate lying around, you're going to have to use plane shift or similar magic to get there and back, and that can do a number on your spells per day. So if you want to pop in and out at-will, all you need is the right magic item. The cheapest one is the robe of stars, which lets you use plane shift to travel to and from the Astral Plane. When you create a demiplane, you can choose to locate it on the Astral Plane or Ethereal Plane, making it a valid target for your home away from home. The more expensive option is an Amulet of the Planes, which is just at-will plane shifting, though it requires a DC 15 Intelligence check to get where you want to go. Not a serious problem, because you're a wizard. On to other fun spells. There is a high-end ring known as the ring of continuation which does one interesting thing: it sets the duration of any personal spell that lasts 10 minutes/level or longer to 24 hours. Among the possible spells that fits that description is shapechange, one of the two biggest polymorph spells. Polymorph spells deserve a post on their own for their completely ridiculous nature in 3e, and Paizo understandably tried to wind them back by fracturing the line into a bunch of smaller spells that only offered limited features for different creature types. Since they didn't release some of the creature type spells like monstrous humanoid and undead until Ultimate Magic, it creates a weird situation where shapechange can't change you into those types because it can't emulate those spells. Still, while shapechange isn't as ridiculously good as it was in the previous edition, a wizard with a ring of continuation is basically a one-wizard menagerie full of fun problem-solving tools all day, every day. Of course, they didn't radically change the other major bunker buster of the polymorph line, polymorph any object, which allows you to bolt on all sorts of special abilities, letting you do almost anything you want, be it changing someone's hair color or turning pumpkins into carriages. Of all the highest-level spells, perhaps the most exploitable in Pathfinder is the one that's half plot device- Wish. Capable of twisting reality to your will, it's always been a challenge to limit the abuse of this spell. 3e gave it a fairly expensive experience point cost, which was a problem because if you were a high level wizard who wanted to regain that experience, you had to get into a fight with high-level opponents, who were a combination of both rare and dangerous to your continued existence. In Pathfinder, they've abolished experience costs in favor of material costs- in this case, a diamond worth 25,000 gp. Material costs in general are one of the weirder aspects of D&D and Pathfinder, because it's never entirely clear just how you're supposed to determine value. The intent seems to be that spell requires a gem of certain size/purity and cost is just a short-hand for that aspect, but since the game just uses cost, it creates some strange outcomes- what happens if you got the gems on sale? Do they still count? If it's instead linked to a sort of platonic ideal of gem costs, does that mean that the commodities market is heavily watched by spellcasters everywhere, waiting for the right time to engage in expensive rituals in order to make the most out of their material components? Is there some sort of wizard version of DeBeers who engage in price fixing and hold back the gem supply in order to drive up the value of their stocks? Expensive material costs tend to be the only thing curbing high-level spells, but it's not as much of a bind as experience costs were. Character wealth is usually fixed and parceled out according to character level in order to prevent characters from acquiring ridiculous magic items too soon, and thus for most characters spending money on one-use items like expensive spells, potions, scrolls, staves, wands and other consumable items is just burning small holes in your character's capabilities as you slowly consume wealth that could have been put towards a long-term item you could use and reuse. But for a wizard, there's just one question: Can I make more money using this spell than I would have to spend on it? If so, fire away. Wish has several possible options: -Duplicating wizard spells: Generally, as a wizard you probably shouldn't need this. Though it does mean that the spell will have a higher save DC. -Duplicating non-wizard spells: More useful, but as a level 15+ wizard you can use the True Name of a planetar to have a 16th level cleric on-call. In fact, since a planetar has 17 hit dice and you can bind something with up to 18 hit dice, you could get a planetar with 1 level of cleric, who counts as a 17th level cleric with 9th level spells. -Undoing harmful spells: Usually, there are cheaper spells to deal with this, possibly cast by aforementioned planetar cleric -Revive the dead: Well, since it duplicates resurrection, it's usually cheaper to have the planetar cast resurrection, but there are some things that kill targets so thoroughly that you're going to need a wish to bring it back -Undo misfortune: Some days, things are bad enough that this is an option -Provide inherent bonuses: A good way to boost your intelligence, but it's often cheaper to bind genies and make them do it instead -Transport creatures: This one is interesting Raising people from the dead is an interesting prospect, because it's a trade-off between affordability and effectiveness. Ressurrection and True Resurrection are more expensive than Raise Dead, but also don't offer as many negative levels which you have pay to remove and can operate on targets that have been dead for longer, and dead of more impressive things, or whose bodies are in various states of powder. Of course, even True Resurrection can't return those who have died of old age, teaching us an important lesson that no matter how much power you amass, even the mightest mage must eventually bow before the power of- -oh wait, never mind. About the only way to stop an immortal wizard is to kill them and run out the clock on resurrection over the next few centuries. Of course, running out the clock can be difficult if the wizard's friends don't care about clocks to begin with. Or if the wizard has a spare body or ten. Dealing lasting harm to a wizard with wish is hard enough, because a wizard can always just whistle up a full-heal artifact. While artifacts are normally not fair game for power considerations, this one specifically allows transportation via wish, which means high level casters can probably pass it around like a hockey puck. Thing about transporting creatures via wish is that while you have cheaper and more effective methods of transporting you and your allies, you don't have cheaper and more effective ways of transporting your enemies. Wish can take up to one target per caster level from any location in any plane and deposit them anywhere else on any plane. So while you could use teleport to pop into a villain's sanctum, you could use wish to drop the villain into your sanctum instead. Or anywhere else you please. Admittedly, you need to breach the target's Spell Resistance and the target has to fail a Will save, but that's not necessarily as hard as it sounds. The Tarrasque is a legendary monster with 36 spell resistance and a will save bonus of +12. To beat its SR, we need to roll 1d20 + our caster level check. +20 (level 20 wizard) +1 ioun stone +2 Casting from our enhanced magic (universal/wishes) greater demiplane +4 kimono+4 two feats on Greater Spell Penetration +2 from our teamwork feat, which we can use any time we're adjacent to our valet familiar +2 for being an elf (at least in spirit) This is a total of +35, meaning we can succeed even on a natural 1. The Tarrasque has the highest SR in the game, and this is overkill. Just with our gear and basic Spell Penetration we can succeed almost 2/3rds of the time against the Tarrasque. Meanwhile, the Tarrasque is rolling its will save against our spell DC of 10 + 9 (spell level) + our Int modifier, so an Intelligence score of 36 (achievable for a level 20 wizard, though it will require some investment in things like aging or inherent bonuses) will be enough to set the DC to 32, meaning the Tarrasque can only succeed on a natural 20. Should that not be enough, with the use of a metamagic rod to apply persistent spell the Tarrasque has to roll a natural 20 twice in order to shake off the wish. (we can also boost both save DC and caster level with a little help from our planetar's cleric spells) So, barring some stupid luck on the part of the big T, you can send this engine of destruction anywhere you feel like. Maybe you want to see how your enemies handle the Tarrasque, or maybe you just want to teleport it into the heart of the sun. Now, this won't actually kill the Tarrasque since it's immune to fire damage, but the Tarrasque can't breathe in space. This isn't fatal either, because as a spawn of Rovagug, it hibernates whenever it would otherwise be unable to breathe and just rides it out. Up side to this is that while hibernating, it's immune to divinations and any spells that would allow spell resistance (such as teleportation effects and wish). This means that if you teleport the Tarrasque into space, people are going to have to find it and bring it back the old-fashion way unless they can figure out some way to make it breathe and pop out of hibernation. If it's locked in an air-less anti-magic zone like the Hotel California demiplane, people are going to have to find some non-magical ways to get it breathing and moving again (which is even harder if the Hotel California is also perpetually on fire and full of rocks and water). So if the world is giving you a reward of more than 25,000 gp for defeating the Tarrasque, it's only a wish away. And since you can move one target per caster level, you can scatter the Tarrasque and the rest of its lesser siblings. Of course, while high-level characters aren't going to have the same degree of Spell Resistance as the Tarrasque, they're probably going to have better will saves (unless they're fighters). But since you can abduct 20+ characters at a time, why not go harass some mid-level characters? Even NPCs are carrying 10,000 gp worth of stuff, and you can get half their gear value from resale, more than enough to cover the cost of the wish several times over. But why settle for just gear when you can make them work for you? Have them put on a show for the amusement of tens of thousands of paying fans. If you're worried about the view, scrying displaces its subject on the spell focus, a mirror worth 1000 gp- get a big enough mirror and you now have a magical jumbotron. If you're going to all this effort to set up a show, then it's going to be annoying if your subjects go and teleport out of your stadium. Locking down the arena can get expensive, so why not make sure that you're located out of the usual operating range? Your basic teleport spell travels 100 miles per caster level, so you'd have to be a thousand miles away from anything of interest, and that won't stop them from making multiple trips. They might even have the ability to cast greater teleport and travel anywhere in the world. But you know what? We're a 20th level caster, we can go even farther.  (Of course, if you don't mind being imprecise about distance, a mid-level cleric could travel home with the use of two copies of plane shift, teleporting from Fantasy Mars to another plane, and then from the other plane to Fantasy Earth. But not everyone at that level can cast plane shift, and those that can't also tend to be noncasters with terrible willpower and entertaining enough fighting skills.) So remember, you are only one DC 35 will save away from being transported to an alien world and forced to fight for the amusement of an eternal world-ending god wizard on a heavenly throne.
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Apr 3, 2013 02:13
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Esser-Z posted:And now I really, really want to play a wizard. Not to break the game, mind, but to be just an incredible dick to my every foe. It's pretty much the wizard's calling card. Think about it from a wizard's perspective. In your basic fight, there are two general forms of battle. When a fighter or other weapon-using character fights, the combatant makes an attack roll, rolling one twenty-sided die and adding an attack bonus, with a high enough number allowing the character to do damage, and a really high number allowing the character to do extra damage. When a wizard or other caster casts an offensive spell, the majority of them involve the wizard casting a spell, and then the target making a saving throw, rolling one twenty-sided die and adding a save bonus, with a high enough number allowing the target to shake off some or all of the spell's effect. Thus in a fight, no matter the situation, the fighter would be pleased to personally roll high, while the wizard would love for the enemy to roll low. Against a powerful foe, the fighter thinks "how can I fight better? How can I gain an advantage from flanking or spells or using my favored weapons in order to rise up to the challenge?" Fundamentally, a fighter runs on hope. Against a powerful foe, the wizard thinks "how can I make this enemy fight worse? How can I so wrack this foe with plagues, fear, and curses that this enemy is reduced to a mewling wreck of a creature lying helplessly at my feet?" Fundamentally, a wizard runs on spite. While a fighter seeks personal strength, a wizard seeks to deny and negate the strengths of others. Swarm them, mire them, rip out their fangs, dull their blades, bind their limbs and seal their wings, let their flames splash harmlessly against your wards as their words fall into an empty void, let their eyes grow dim and their arms grow weak, turn their numbers against them and chain them to your will. Take everything, and when they have been reduced to a wretched shell trembling in fear and incapable of doing harm... execute them. Some will say that there are things others can do that a wizard cannot, and that a wizard's weaknesses necessitate the aid of others. And there are those who look at their own shortcomings and then disparage and belittle the things that they cannot do. Some call this "sour grapes", but when wizards look at their own absences and dismiss them as unnecessary, well... the wizards may not be entirely wrong. A wizard can use planar binding to gain the service of a celestial cleric, but a cleric cannot use planar ally to easily gain the service of a celestial wizard. And even if the cleric could, a wizard can coerce an angel into working for free, while a cleric must make a fair deal with any ally called to serve. For any given problem, a wizard may be able to come up with a solution, reaching the same destination as another class even if the route is different. And that's assuming that the wizard doesn't just cast a spell that gives the wizard another class's signature feature. While there are wizard spells that give the features of other classes, there are very few other classes with features that give wizard spells at anything other than a rudimentary level. (Of course, if you really need a rogue, just grow your own). There is the issue of spells known, of course. Each day, clerics prepare spells from the wide variety of spells offered by their patron deities, while wizards must prepare from the spells they've scribed into their books. And while the wizard gets two free spells to scribe into books each level, there are far more spells out there to learn. But if you look at it another way, wizards have the ability to learn a host of useful and unique spells that clerics can only hope to borrow via their domains, as well as a pile of spells that clerics will never be able to touch at all. So while a wizard's starting spells may be few, the wizard is ultimately limited only by ambition. And while a god will refuse to grant access to cleric spells that are against the god's ethos, and ultimately turn away from a cleric who steps out of line... A wizard answers to no one. A wizard can buy and trade spells from scrolls and the books of other wizards, or a wizard can borrow those books, or acquire them as plunder after battle. But why limit yourself to the written word? An arcane caster is a valuable source of magical knowledge if you know how to get it, so why let it go to waste? (Note: Blood Transcription requires you to down a pint of the target's blood to learn a spell. A wand of blood transcription can let you cast the spell fifty times in a row on the same target. Most human bodies hold around ten pints of blood, and the average stomach doesn't really have that much capacity. So if you need a ton of spells, either you can consume more blood than either of you can hold, or your wizard learns how to... recycle.) Some may object to the methodology, but are they not trifles in the grand scheme of things? A tool is a tool, and its morality is determined in its use- such talk of banal things such as "good" and "evil" is for chained minds. After all, it's ridiculous to assume that a wizard would become "good" just by repeatedly casting a spell infused by the powers of good, so why would a wizard be mastered by an "evil" spell? (especially given that the wizard spell list has a bunch of spells with the [evil] descriptor, and very few with the [good] descriptor) Magic is wonderful, isn't it? A great enabler, it can do almost anything and allow you to pursue your passions no matter where they lie. Give a mage enough power, and even the most deeply buried vice is now within reach. Really, who's going to stop you? The thing about magical power is that the more you have, the more you can do, and the fewer challenges you will face. You soon have no need for food, water, or shelter, and you don't suffer from disease or injury. You have no need to struggle and sweat just to survive and meet your basic needs, leaving your every waking moment to devote to your desires. And since you only need two hours of sleep per day, you have a lot of waking moments. Magic frees you from so many troubles. Why walk when you can fly, or cross the world in the blink of an eye? Why work hard and slave away, when you can finish with but a wave? Do you crave knowledge? Friendship? Youth? Physical Perfection? Secrets? Truth? Treasure? Whatever you desire, you can build it, find it, seize it. And of course, the more you have, the less you have to answer to. You have no job to lose or boss to disappoint, and no survival necessities that demand an income. You have nothing to prevent you from relocating to another corner of the world save for the ties you have to your current home. If you need to hide, no magic will ever find you. Should you run afoul of the law, how would they punish you for your transgressions? What court could rule against you, what cell could possibly contain you? Even if you face the gallows, it's a minor setback and a fair price to pay for closing the book on your past. Simply start anew afterwards. The more might you amass, the more facts become evident. There are powerful forces in the world and those who would challenge those forces, but to truly challenge them requires more than just sinew and will. It requires power- the power to boost strength, traverse barriers, pierce defenses, ward against danger and cast aside the path of fate itself. Those without power might seek it out through the use of powerful artifacts, but it is often a pale imitation of the real thing and is not cheaply purchased. But those who cast spells can access double that power or more, seizing it with their own hands and adding their own power to the mix. Ultimately, he greatest challenges in the world can only be met with the cooperation of magic users- spellcasters are the foundation of true strength in the world. Even among casters, there is a difference in strength that comes from the ability to use it. When it comes down to it, a cleric requests, a wizard demands. (Alternatively: A Wizard chooses. A Cleric obeys.) No matter how powerful, a cleric ultimately is the vessel for another's will and limited by that authority, but wizards are under no limitations save for the ones they choose to accept. Setting aside questions of the exact hierarchy, the fact remains that magic users are in a realm of their own. Every spell you can cast has value. A caster is the product of years of effort and is not so easily replaced like common labor. While skilled specialists are useful, the raw intellect of a wizard can be turned to mastering a host of different skills, which are then boosted further by the wizard's spells and magical items. As a wizard, you are almost certainly the most profoundly intelligent being in any situation you encounter, making it only natural that others should turn to you for direction rather than yoke themselves to their own base emotions. At the very least, by assuming control over their finances, you can leverage them to even greater heights through item construction and the establishment of powerful spells. Never forget that your power places you on a level only a few in all the worlds will ever reach (and this is regardless of your personal power at the moment- you can always improve, and there are very few wizards who think "well, I'm going to learn how to access the third circle of spells and then I'll be satisfied"). While it's not impossible or even uncommon for a wizard to have relationships with others, the more power you amass, the more likely it'll turn into a relationship with a dependent instead of an equal. Even if you are blessed with a wonderful relationship, there may come a day when time ceases to flow for you and you alone. But your companions will be still be haunted by the reaper's footsteps, and there is almost nothing you can do to halt them. But perhaps you to the moment say, "beautiful moment, do not pass away!" and build a realm where the clock hands fall, but despite your efforts cannot save them all. All the time you try to hide will return in an instant when they step outside. But to be locked away is a mental throttle, so why don't you just put the whole world in a bottle? How easy would it be, to just take control? Wizardry is, after all, ultimately an exercise of will, asserting your vision of the world in a contest between your skill and intellect and the physical and mental resistance of your opponents. To be a wizard is to gaze upon the world and think "no, that will not do" and then take steps to correct it. After all, you don't ask for permission to teleport across the world, ensnare a mind, transform a foe or engulf a field in flames- you simply decide on a course of action, select a spell, and thy will be done. Would not the world be a better place under your magnificent intellect? There are those who would protest, but they are simple creatures who lack your clarity, and if they cannot be salvaged the world would probably be better off without them. It's not as though you haven't disposed of the refuse of the world before and then stepped over its smouldering ashes- trash that blocks the path to the new world has no right to exist. After all you've done to protect the world, the people basically owe their lives to your efforts- that means their lives are basically yours, aren't they? And things would be so much better if they would follow instructions. Or would they prefer the alternative? As the days roll by, how many people will you lose and how many times will find others to replace them? How many battles will you face, how many threats will you end, how many family lines will wither and how many kingdoms will turn to dust before it all loses its luster? How many cycles and centuries will you go through before you realize that it's all run together, that others only turn to you to beg you to save them, to seal the cracks in their fractured realms? Before you realize that you don't really know most of these people and the few you do know are relentlessly the same as those that have gone before? How long before you realize that you're fighting for a people you have not seen and a land you have not set foot on in centuries? How long before you realize that you don't fight for a cause, but the idea of one, a memory of your time as a mortal, and in time the memory of that memory? How long before you realize that you have more in common with gods than men? Why do you fight for a world you have no stake in? How long before you simply turn away, and leave those bloated maggots to squabble over that rotting carcass? You are curiosity and will without consent, avarice and ambition without concern, power and vision without constraint. You are a wizard... and there is no one else in the world who comes close to you. I am not surprised when wizards become monsters... with all they are given, it is difficult to become anything else.
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Apr 7, 2013 06:49
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Transient People posted:Inverting the order here, but I am totally stealing these lines for a future character if I can have your permission Lightwarden. They're just perfectly emblematic of the ideological difference between a D&D mage and a D&D warrior. Help yourself. It was one of those things you probably notice on some level after making a control wizard's spell selection enough times and seeing just how fully you devote yourself to making fights unfair, and just what you're thinking when you're casting those spells. Instead of rising up to meet a challenge, you drag it down into the dirt and stomp on it. It also adds a hilariously meta angle to the whole "fighters can't have nice things" debate. While I don't begrudge people for playing a game they enjoy, I find it funny how people love to go on about how 3e/PF is a simulation whose casual realism rules provide a verisimilitudinous world- in my experience, if the rules simulate anything, it's a fantasy world that is both strange and terrifying. MadScientistWorking posted:Actually, if we are including Pathfinder and are just simply invoking abilities that mimic the wizard's spells then the Alchemist gets a ton of Wizard features that are either flat out better or slightly worst. The most hilarious thing being is that its not actually a caster class. I don't think that the alchemist's infusions quite reach the same level of power as the wizard's highest level spells, but they're good, and the alchemist has some pretty awesome discoveries and interesting archetypes. I'd certainly place an alchemist on the list of "people a wizard wouldn't mind hanging out with." If you're going to be a wizard hanging out on alien planets and wishing up contestants for your arena, it's not a bad idea to have an alchemist on hand to act as the Spiral to your Mojo.
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Apr 7, 2013 19:30
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Let's talk turkey in Pathfinder. Money makes the world go 'round, so how the hell do you earn it? At your most basic, the game assumes you make money by making skill checks to get income over a period of time. The most basic of these is probably Profession, which is broken into a series of skills that represent your ability to [do a thing]. To earn a living, roll a profession check and collect a number of gold pieces equal to half that result for that week. You can take 10 on a profession check to represent an average amount of effort, so your average level 1 character is probably going to earn somewhere around 5 to 8 gold pieces a week. Of course, your income is based on your check result, so anything that boosts your Profession skill will in turn boost your weekly income by 1 gold piece for every 2 points. For example, a masterwork tool for a particular profession costs 50 gp and adds a +2 bonus to your checks, meaning it pays for itself after a year or so. Among the easiest ways to boost your skill is simply having a high wisdom stat- and as you age, your wisdom stat naturally improves even as your physical stats quickly deteriorate. Certain races such as gnomes get a +2 racial bonus to Profession checks, though halflings can also pick up a similar ability through alternate traits. To make maters worse, dwarves not only get a racial bonus to Wisdom, but can get a racial bonus to Profession (sailor) checks, or Profession checks that deal with metal or stone, and thus are perfectly capable of taking the jobs of hard-working humans and doing them better and longer. The only recourse a human has is to take the heart of the fields racial trait, adding a bonus to their checks equal to half their level, and then must out-level the dwarf to stay competitive (sadly, even then the dwarf will have a few more centuries to out-earn the human). Assuming you're some sort of level 20 poo poo-kicker with the wisdom that surpasses gods, every skill-boosting feat known to man, a rocking magic item that boosts your skills and a host of minions aiding your every move, you may be able to earn a princely sum of... forty to fifty gold pieces a week.  Interestingly enough, while use of your Profession skill means you're familiar with the basic tools and tasks of your trade, it doesn't allow you to do anything that's already covered by other skills. Thus, you may have the world's greatest merchant, but that doesn't mean you're any good at fast-talking, haggling, spotting cheats or even knowing anything about what you're buying. If you had Profession (doctor) and someone asked you to heal them, you'd be perfectly justified in saying "drat it Jim, I'm a doctor, not a doctor!" (Perhaps that is why Profession (Doctor) is not on the list of profession skills- who knows how they earn their money?). But maybe the service industry is not for you, so why not take up crafting? Just like Profession, you can spend a week to earn half your Craft check in gold pieces by making things and selling them. Alternatively, you can make things and sell them. To do so (assuming you have the right craft skill), you find an item, spend 1/3 its cost to buy raw materials, and then make one craft check a week against a DC based on the item. If you're successful, you multiply your check result by the DC and that's the number of silver pieces (10 silver pieces equals 1 gold piece) worth of work you've accomplished that week. Once your amount of work exceeds the cost of the item, you're done. Given that you're basically comparing (Craft Check*DC)/10 to (Craft Check)/2 to determine how many gold pieces you "make" in a week, crafting items on your own becomes the superior option for all but the most trivial of DCs. The problem then becomes one of market price, raw material cost, and time. Calculating in terms of silver pieces is fine and all when you're dealing with forging horseshoes or whatever, but when you start dealing with items worth hundreds or thousands, or tens of thousands of gold pieces, that translates to one enormous pile of silver pieces that you have to chip away at. Even assuming you basically earn your craft check squared, a talented crafter hitting a DC 30 each time is going to make 900 silver pieces worth of progress per week, which means it's going to take 16 weeks to make a suit of full plate and since a suit of mithral platemail adds 9000 gp to the cost, it requires another two years of work. This may seem fair, but mechanical traps cost 1000 gp x the trap's challenge rating, which means it can take our talented crafter twelve weeks to make the most basic ones. The game admits that simple traps might cost as little as 250 gp x the trap's challenge rating, but that still means it takes our talented craft three weeks to dig a hole in the ground. If we didn't have this crafting all-star at our beck and call, it could take half a year or more. Of course, we can decrease the construction time down to a quarter of that by just adding pillows to the bottom, reducing the trap's CR and thus making it cheaper and faster to build. Things get even faster if you have the right magic tools to craft 2000 gp worth of stuff in an hour, or just finish up inside of six seconds if you're a wizard. So, one might ask, what exactly does the sweat of our brow get us? Well, let's find out. For starters, we can look at the bottom of this page to get the basic approximation of cost of living per month. Core Rulebook posted:Food & Lodging (aka Monthly Cost of Living) Recall that Profession and Craft will get you half your check per week, or about two times your check per month (again depending on how time is blocked out in the world). Your average commoner has a check of about 14 when taking 10 for average results, enough to support the commoner and one or may two dependents (two if the dependents aid the commoner) at an average lifestyle. Let's make an elite commoner here. Level 1, using the basic array and putting our highest score (13) into Wisdom. Making a dwarf, that bumps it up to 15 Wisdom, and let's be middle aged for an additional +1 to Wisdom, 16 total and a +3 wisdom modifier. 1 rank in profession (miner), with a +3 bonus since it's a class skill, a +2 bonus because of the dwarf racial trait +3 wisdom +3 skill focus (profession (miner)), and why not have a masterwork mining tool for an additional +2. 1d20+14 check, take 10 for 24 and 12 gp a week. That's almost two gp a day! Let's make it rain!  We can easily afford the 10 gp a month for average living conditions, so we don't have to keep track of meals and other expenses that cost less than 1 gp, and can support up to three other dependents such as offspring. We have enough money to enjoy a decent meal, plus a good drink now and- oh look, a pound of chocolate costs about what we make in a week  . But that doesn't matter, we make enough to enjoy the simple things, even if a good-sized game ball costs half a week's wages. Why, just looking around, we're doing pretty well in comparison to our fellow workers. We have enough money to travel and stay at a nice inn, and afford a hot bath every day. We make almost two gold pieces a day... learned people like doctors, scribes and valets are paid only one gold piece a day. Life is pretty good.  A wealthy lifestyle is just a frivolous material thing, forever out of our reach... we should not desire such transient things.And look, a chronicler can make 5 gp, an experienced lawyer or companion makes 10 gp, and a sage makes 15 gp- oh, that's per day  . That's impossible! Do they only work one or two days per week, or do they possess such amazing Profession skills that even the gods might shudder in fear of that talent?How is such a thing possible? Well, the third way to make money using your own skills is through Perform. Unlike the previous two skills, Perform doesn't function on a weekly basis, but a daily one, and its output scales much differently. Unlike the strictly linear results of Craft and Profession, Perform starts out earning only about 5 copper pieces a day (100 coppers in one gold piece), making it inferior to the 5 gp a week from Profession or Craft checks, and inferior to the 1 silver piece a day you get from unskilled labor. A DC 15 check earns 1d10 silver pieces a day (around 3 or 4 gp per week if you work without breaks), out-earning unskilled labor but still less than the 7.5 gold pieces per week you'd earn if you could hit that DC with the other two skills. Once you hit DC 20, you earn 3d10 silver pieces a day, and on average are competitive with the 10 gold pieces per week you could earn from doing other work. At DC 25, you're now earning 1d6 gold pieces a day, and have left the other skills in the dust, even moreso for the 3d6 gold pieces a day you get from a DC 30 check. Even better, at high results you get attention from powerful patrons, meaning you're pretty much always going to be in demand. Of course, this does all depend on how exactly time flows in your game world. While days, seasons and years can all be measured by changes in your environment, weeks and months are an entirely arbitrary way of measuring time chosen by your civilization. While our weeks are seven days, they could just as easily be five days or ten. Since Perform runs on days while Profession and Craft run on weeks, the longer the week the less you get done and the better Perform becomes in comparison. A kingdom that has five day weeks will produce twice as a fast as a kingdom that has ten day weeks. A kingdom that switches over to one day weeks will become one of the most prosperous ones in existence. And it's never entirely clear just how many days per week you're supposed to be working. Do they have weekends? Moral of this story: If you want a job and don't really care about it, take Profession. If you want a job with some flexibility and the option to do your own thing against an uncertain future, take Craft. If you're going to be good at your job and want to earn piles of cash with no commitment of time, learn how to rock. Of course, a character capable of hitting a DC 30 Perform check with regularity would certainly be a rare find, someone who had seen and undergone much. Just how much a veteran would such a person have to be? Well, if we wanted to build an elite performer, it'd be best to start with a race that grants a +2 bonus to Charisma and a +2 racial bonus to Perform checks. One possible option is the Vishkanya, a race of attractive poisonous people (possibly descended from snake people?). Or we could start with an Azata-blooded Aasimar, descended from passionate and expressive angel-like beings. Same positive bonuses as the vishkanya, but fewer penalties (aasimar are pretty good as a player race). But let's start with a merfolk with the "sea singer" trait, which has even better stat modifiers (three positive stat modifiers and no negative stat modifiers, an absolute rarity among pathfinder races). We could start with an expert, but let's kick things up a notch and go with a bard, because music, right? Let's further modify it with the geisha archetype, which sacrifices the bardic knowledge for a bonus equal to half our level to several skills, including a perform skill of our choice. It also sacrifices armor and weapon proficiencies, but who cares? We're only here to rock. As a character of some importance, we also have access to traits, which are little features that boost various skills and provide other options. We could have tossed a trait on the dwarven miner, but sadly there weren't any that boosted Profession (miner) checks (though we could have been a sailor instead and earned a bit more). Anyways, for our performance trait, we could be a musical savant and get +2 to all perform checks, or we could elect to believe in our inner beauty once per day for a +4 trait bonus to one check. Actually, since they're two different categories of traits (savant is social, inner beauty is religious), we can have both traits, though since they're trait bonuses they don't stack. Well, as a character with class-levels, we can use the elite array, which means our highest ability score starts at 15 instead of 13, boosted to 17 by the merfolk's racial bonuses. Our starting feat is Skill Focus (Perform (sing)), so how far must we go before we hit the big time? Well, at level 1, we've got 1d20 + 3 (charisma) + 1 (rank) + 3 (class skill) + 1 (geisha knowledge) + 3 (skill focus) + 2 (racial) + 4 (trait) = 1d20 + 17. Not quite enough. Even if we find a masterwork item like a microphone or acoustic sound stage something for a +2 bonus, it's still +19, requiring an 11 or higher, a 50/50 shot at the big money (but even at our worst we still earn about as much as a day job). Of course, a level 2 bard gets 1 more rank, putting you at 1d20+20 with a masterwork item bonus, which means you can take 10 for a result of 30. But maybe the DM doesn't like the masterwork idea, fair enough. Level 3 adds another one rank and the option of taking a feat- there are many that boost your Perform check, one of them being prodigy. But maybe your DM doesn't like +4 trait, either. Ok, level 4 grants us another rank, and a bonus point to round our Charisma from 17 to 18, increasing the bonus to +4 and boosts the geisha knowledge bonus. 1d20 + 4 (charisma) + 4 (ranks) + 3 (class skill) + 2 (geisha knowledge) + 3 (skill focus) + 2 (prodigy) + 2 (racial) + 2 (savant trait) = 1d20+22, which is more than we need. We can drop any of the +2 traits or feats and still come out ahead. At DC 30 when taking 10, we earn 3d6 per performance each day, 10.5 average. We earn as much money per day as an elite lawyer (or escort). We need only work 10 days out of the month in order to live like the wealthy do, and anything past that can be blown on fun things. With 200 gp of discretionary funds, we can buy some nice novelty items, or more if we're willing to save. We could basically retire at level 4. By level 10, we've taken 6 more ranks, gotten another +3 from geisha knowledge, and another +5 from our two feats (with room for three more feats), putting us at 1d20+36. We can show up completely drunk, slur all our words, insult the audience and then pass out on stage and we'd still receive rave reviews and a call for an encore (in fact, we could basically stop caring somewhere around level 8, or earlier if we got the right items or feats). And this is performing solo, without some fellow performers to hand out +2 aid another bonuses. And since we're a bard, one of our class features is versatile performance, which allows us to use our ridiculous singing modifier to both lie and detect lies. No one will ever discover our secrets! Some may point out that as a member of the merfolk species, our bard is ill-suited for working in the city, what with the whole "no legs" thing that gives the merfolk a land speed of 5 ft (compared to a human's 30 ft). Surely, it would be better for a merfolk to take something like the strong tail trait to sacrifice swim speed for a better move speed, or take advantage of the Fins to Feet spell (which comes in item form). Sure, you could do that... if you were weak. We can reject the prejudiced assumptions of the city dwellers and make our own way in the world. There are several possible ways to get around this limitation. The first is to recognize that a move speed of 5 feet is still a move speed. Spells like expeditious retreat and longstrider or even stuff like taking the travel domain or levels in barbarian or monk can boost your ability to flop/drag/wriggle around on the ground at speeds approaching normal. In fact, a merfolk with 18 levels of monk can crawl as fast as a human can jog, but the downside to that is that you just took 18 levels of monk. There is the question of anatomy- while they don't have legs, does a merfolk adventurer have feet for the purposes of wondrous items? While they can't wear shoes, can they strap anklets on near their caudal fins or something? If you do have a feet slot, then items like boots of striding and springing might be useful, otherwise you'd have to stick to a staff of travel or something. Hypothetically, you could also try jumping. Leaping around was folded into the acrobatics skill and basically allows you to jump as far as your check result with a running start, or half that without it. Monks and ninjas are always treated as though they had a running start for their jumps. With such a crummy move speed, a merfolk will take a good-sized penalty to the jump attempts, but more importantly the skill says that "No jump can allow you to exceed your maximum movement for the round." But what counts as maximum movement? Is it your speed (5 ft)? Your speed on a double move (10 ft) or a run (20 ft)? And if you roll a result higher than your move speed, do you just fail to cover any extra distance or do you keep going into the next round? If so, does a merfolk who rolls a 30 get 6 rounds of hang time? Alternatively, with the right items you could spike your carrying capacity to the point where even the weakest merfolk could lift its own body weight. Could you then use Acrobatics to walk around on your hands? If so, at what speed? Of course, the far easier method is just to outsource your walking needs. The aforementioned strength-boosters can be slapped onto a companion, who can then give you piggyback rides. You could also get your own vehicle such as a dogsled or chariot. As a race with a Dexterity bonus, merfolk make decent enough cavalry despite their complete lack of legs, so a merfolk paladin, druid, summoner, ranger or any other class with an animal companion or similar creature will have little problem riding around and delivering justice. You can even magic up your own horse or chariot (or less impressive horse) and take a ride that way. If you're going to use magic, why not bring the water over to you and swim in that? The rules are completely silent as to how deep the water needs to be before you can make swim checks, so maybe you can swim across a wet floor. At higher levels, who needs a land speed when you have a fly speed? Even if you're not capable of casting those kind of spells, unlimited flight is still within your capabilities through the use of items such as brooms, carpets or flying bathtubs, or through capes or headbands if you don't want people hijacking your junk. And while it can't fly fast or long, it's difficult to beat a ambulatory sofa when it comes to traveling in style. Feel free to animate your own furniture for your convenience There's also the poor merfolk's substitute of levitation (available in footgear form)- while it normally lets you push or pull yourself around at half your speed, it's rather vague about how outside forces can act on you. If they can't affect you, then it's an easy way to make yourself an Immovable Fishstick, but if they can affect you then just attach a rope to your waist and let your friends drag you around like a parade balloon. Similar options involve surfing around on an ally's floating disk if you don't mind sticking close and not going anywhere in a hurry. Most of these options work not just for merfolk, but anyone else who may have limited mobility due anatomy or circumstances. Anyways, we've established that it's not too hard for a merfolk bard to rock like Keith Richards and live accordingly. But still, 300 gp earned per month at low levels is only enough to put us in the "wealthy" bracket, even if it is ten times more than anything else that a commoner would earn. What kind of luxuries await for those who live in the Extravagent bracket? Well, ignoring purchases of 100 gp and down means you can enjoy all but the finest luxuries in food, housing, service and entertainment. Pathfinder indicates that this is the lifestyle of aristocrats, though the aristocrats don't have any sort of class features that let them hit this level of income with anything other than DM fiat. Well... sort of. See, Pathfinder has a Noble Scion prestige class (not to be confused with the Noble Scion feat that can be used as a prerequisite for the PrC, or the Noble Scion NPC who has neither the feat nor levels in the PrC, and in fact doesn't really even fully qualify for it). It's pretty much a straight improvement for NPC aristocrats and an interesting enough option for some player characters. At level 1, you get 750 gold pieces and you gain an additional amount equal to 750 times your level in this class each time you take a level in this class. One level is not really enough to justify levels in this class, but ten levels is an extra 41,250 gp, which is certainly something. At level 2, you get Leadership, pretty much The Best Feat. In 3e, Leadership was a throwback to the glory days of old when higher level characters suddenly got saddled with a keep full of men-at-arms or a tower of wizard apprentices or something. Anyways, take leadership and you get two things- a pile of followers and one cohort. Followers are basically NPC minions that you don't really need to worry about, but a cohort is basically an NPC with class levels. Depending on how many PC options you incorporate, you can wind up getting a second character for the price of a feat (a character who may be under the DM's control, but that's still an expansion of options). Normally, you're prevented from recruiting a cohort that's up to two levels below you, but a cohort that adventures with you levels up normally, and can quickly close the gap just by gaining more XP per fight due to the level difference and requiring less. A noble scion is instead limited to recruiting a cohort that's up to one level below you. Level 3 adds a bonus equal to half your noble scion level to your Diplomacy (useful) and some Knowledge checks (not quite as useful). Level 4 brings up the first of three bonus feats (next at 6 and 8, useful), as well as a weekly pile of wealth equal to 150 + 10 gp per noble scion level. 250 gp a week at 10 levels of noble scion translates to 1000+ gp a month, perfect for living the high life! Unfortunately, by rules-as-written, an extravagent lifestyle requires 1000 gp spent at the start of the month, so the weekly fund might not cover it. And while the game prohibits the Noble Scion from stockpiling wealth through this ability, it does allow this wealth to be spent hiring entertainers and experts, so it's possible you could engage in a spot of nepotism and set your friends up with cushy jobs (for a small kickback, of course). Level 5 (and level 9) allow the noble to study a few odd disciplines for a few bonuses. Unfortunately, if you don't have the ability to cast spells or use baridic abilities, you're going to have to learn how to shank someone. So don't turn your back on a high-ranking noble. At level 7, you get another cohort, only this one is an NPC class character who doesn't adventure with you, but can stay home and take care of your stuff. Basically, your own Alfred. As such, you're probably better off with a spell-casting adept or a skilled expert rather than combat-ready warrior or another aristocrat (or a commoner, but that goes without saying). At level 10, you gain the ability to roll twice on social skills and take the higher result, plus you can now recruit a cohort of a level equal to yours. So now you can pretend that your cohort is your main character and your Noble Scion is your cohort skillmonkey. While followers with NPC levels generally aren't super important for anything other than day-to-day management, you can use the right magic items to double your total. Twice (which translates to triple, not quadruple, under Pathfinder rules). Maybe you can have your 500 minions make Craft, Profession or Perform checks and give you a cut of the proceeds to better build your glorious empire. NPC classes in general are weird in Pathfinder. If you were born into a wealthy family and have every luxury available to you, what would you do with your life? In the case of most NPC aristocrats, the answer is "prepare for war". A crown princess has devoted every scrap of effort towards battle and is able to win a knife-fight with a bear. The king goes even farther. The exception here seems to be the queen who has devoted some effort towards more useful skills, but even she can probably put a 10-ft tall ogre into a Boston Crab. This is what passes for normal. So, there we have it... if you want to live an extravagant lifestyle, you pretty much have to be a high-level member of the aristocracy, or possibly operate under DM fiat, right? Well, not quite. There's this class you may or may not have heard of called the wizard... Now, thing about spellcasting is that spells have value. Specifically, they have a value equal to the spell level multiplied by the caster level multiplied by 10 gp. So a wizard fresh out of the academy with a caster level of 1 and a single 1st level spell has a spell worth 10 gp. Spells can be prepared and cast each day. A 1st level caster is, at minimum, pulling the same daily wage as one high-grade lawyer or prostitute. A 1st level spell from a 20th level caster is worth enough to rent out an entire law practice or brothel. Just about any wizard who is even worthy of the name has a high enough Intelligence modifier to get a bonus 1st level spell per day, and is thus probably worth at least two lawyers. A school specialist gets a further slot, and a wizard with a bonded item gets one on top of that. Of course, you have to be in a place with demand and have spells other people will pay you to cast, but I don't see a lawyer getting huge business in the middle of the wilderness either. While a lawyer or prostitute generally works the entire day, a wizard can fire off all spells within the space of a few minutes and then go take a nap for eight hours and then do it again during the night shift. Even if the wizard doesn't want to fire off any daily spell slots, the wizard still has options. 1 gp is enough to hire someone to magically clean your clothes using prestidigitation, a cantrip that can be prepared and used at-will by any wizard. All you need is a location and people who value speed more than money. Any crop of aristocrats should do. Once this wizard gets to level three, you're going to see some serious poo poo. At this point the wizard can take Craft Wondrous Item and get into the fine world of making magical toys for overgrown children. There's a huge pile of wondrous items that a wizard can make, and build using this feat. You need capital, of course, but once you have that, then it's time to get to work. All items have a market price, and a caster can craft them for a cost equal to half that price (though rare and expensive spell components drive up the price). In order to craft things successfully, you need to make a Spellcraft check with a DC equal to 5 + the caster level of the item. For any prerequisites you don't meet, the DC goes up by 5. Crafting an item takes 8 hours per 1000 gp of the item's price, or rushed to 4 hours per 1000 gp of the item's price by increasing the DC by 5. Regardless, a caster can't get more than 8 hours of work per day. Those of you capable of basic math may have noticed that items sell for 100% markup, or a 50% margin. This is rather lucrative, especially when you're dealing in items that cost thousands of gold pieces. Thing is... Pathfinder posted:Price: This is the cost, in gold pieces, to purchase the item, if it is available for sale. Generally speaking, magic items can be sold by PCs for half this value. For some reason, the game world knows which characters are PCs and which ones aren't. Old ethnic stereotype hanging out in a wagon selling home-made magical charms? PCs are going to pay full price, with no way to haggle it down. PCs dress up as an old ethnic stereotype and hang out in a wagon selling home-made magical charms? No one is going to pay more than half price, with no way to haggle it up. And given that half the price is what it costs to make the item, the game is rather adamant about the PCs not making a profit. Similarly, while PCs are expected to pay sticker price for an NPC to cast spells for them, you're probably not going to see too many NPCs who are going to approach the PCs looking for magic. Discrimination at its finest. Of course, maybe the vendors have to charge so much for their stuff is that they've got huge overhead with their stores and employees and have to go for days before making a sale. And for all the people who complain that purchasing magic items turns the game world into Magical Walmart, it brings up an interesting question- why isn't there a magical Walmart? Why aren't there magic item craftsmen who forge items and take advantage of their low overhead costs to sell the items at steep discounts compared to their nearest competitors, slowly exerting a downward pressure on the market and driving most of the competition out of business by leaving them unable to compete? Even if they didn't make a 100% markup, they could profit through volume by pricing magical items at a level more people can afford. If the PCs can't get market price, why can't they find someone walking into a magic shop and point out that they're offering the same item for 25% off? Better yet, they could offer membership programs, where you pay a few hundred gold pieces a month to get a 25% discount, and maybe save 50% on spellcasting services. For elite members, you might be able to save 30%, 40% even 45% off of market price at certain select sales during the year! Of course, even with the deck stacked against the PCs, there is one way to make a profit on magical items. Advanced Player's Guide posted:Hedge Magician It's 5% off the cost of the item, a savings of 2.5% compared to the market price. So if an item retails for 1000, instead of costing 500 to build it, it costs 475, for a profit of 25 gp per 1000 gp of the item's price. You can only make one item a day at most, so the objective is to see how much you can make in a day. Fortunately, if you're a wizard, that number is "a fair amount". Once again, we turn to our faithful valet familiar, whose Cooperative Crafting ability lets us double our output each day. Instead of crafting 1000 gp a day for 25 gp profit, it's 2000 gp a day for 50 gp profit. But we're a wizard, and Spellcraft is not only a class skill, but based on our awesome Intelligence modifier and we can take 10 on item creation checks. So we might bump up the DC to halve the amount of time it takes, potentially allowing us to make 4000 gp worth of magical gadgets per day for a 100 gp profit. Even with just our trusty familiar, 50 gp a day is 1500 gp a month, enough for an extravagant lifestyle with money to spare. We can even take the weekends off and still keep our palatial estate. With spellcraft booster, we can do even better, and only work a few weeks per month, spending the rest of the time partying it up. We even have most of our spell slots each day, on the off chance anyone wants to pay our level 3 wizard 60 gp for one of our two or three level 2 slots, or 30 gp for one of our three or four level 1 slots. If we spend a few months to save up enough for a ring of sustenance, we can really get cooking. 0h: Day starts 0h-2h: Prepare spells, prepare self, cast spells for people who want them 2h-10h: Craft 10h-12h: Sleep 12h-13h: Prepare spells 13h-15h: Sell item. Cast spells for people who want them 15h-22h: Party 22h-0h: Sleep Or something to that extent. At any rate, we can get a craft session and two sessions of spell-for-hire while still leaving four to eight hours to do whatever else we want. If you're an elf, you've got a few centuries of working ahead of you. If you're feeling the burn, just drop a session or two or take a few days off- you've got funds to spare. Fill your shop with enough workers and you've got a solid enough production base for your always-low-prices magical shop, and eventually you'll have enough funds to start expanding your operations! All you need is the starting capital- 1000 gp if you're making 50 gp per day, or 2000 gp if you're going for 100 gp profit per day. How fortunate then, that the net worth of a level 3 PC is 3000 gp. You have enough funds to retire into hedonistic luxury as soon as you're capable of pulling off this stunt (assuming you survive the ensuing thieves and assassins). If a commoner earns a respectable 10 gp a week for 50 weeks a year, then working for 70 years straight will earn 35,000 gp... which a PC has somewhere before level nine. In fact, 35k gp won't even buy a +6 stat booster item, and it's not uncommon for every member of a high-level adventuring group to have two or three of them, plus weapons and armor that are worth two or three times that, and that's before you get into things like bags of holding and magic carpets. Adventuring is like winning the lottery, if collecting your winnings required you to win a cage match with the previous lottery winners. Imagine that you and three to five of your friends have just engaged in a life-and-death battle with a winged, firebreathing monster the size of a galleon with teeth bigger than your arm. Having murdered this beast and having been nearly murdered in return, you stumble across a mountain of gold, gems, art and artifacts. There is enough wealth for you and your companions to spend the next several decades living in wealth and comfort, or the next few years engaging in every hedonistic pursuit you can think of... what do you do next? You spend all that money on things that help you kill better and then you go back out to do it again. Adventures just don't brain like most people. They devote immense amounts of time, effort, and money into becoming the most efficient killers and thieves the world has ever known. A high-level adventuring party is essentially a sovereign nation with (winged) feet- their chief export is murder and they're running one hell of a trade surplus. It's as if Stark Industries did its weapons business through house calls. A 20th level adventurer has 880,000 gold pieces, and a dedicated crafter can build double that amount in magical artifacts. That's enough cash to live in absolute luxury for the next seventy years. And it's not enough, it's never enough. They're the Rich Kids of Instagram with lightsabers and power armor. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 04:12
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But then we get into the subtle distinction in spell durations. A transmutation spell with an instantaneous duration (such as fabricate) instantly and irreversibly transforms one thing into another. Polymorph Any Object has a duration of "permanent", which means that while it can last forever, it's still an active spell this entire time, and is thus subject to things like being dispelled, disjuncted, or turned off in an antimagic field. So someone can turn your gold back into iron with the right spell. Also, Polymorph Any Object prohibits you from creating things with "great intrinsic value", though what exactly determines intrinsic value is up for debate.
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Apr 18, 2013 19:02
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Did someone mention thrown weapons? Time for more examples! Back in 2e, the dart was a lowly weapon with that did only 1d3 points of damage per hit, but it had one very unique property- namely, you could throw three of them in the time it took to make one attack. On the surface, it didn't seem like much, since three hits for 2 points of damage a piece wasn't that bad compared to hitting for seven points of damage with a spear or something. Unfortunately, the designers failed to consider that those three hits weren't just two points of damage apiece, but three separate instances of any damage modifier the dart thrower might be packing. This included modifiers from things like strength bonuses, weapon specialization on fighters, and any bonus from having a magical weapon. A high level fighter could get two or three attacks per round normally, which translated to six to nine darts per round, each with a +2 to damage or so from weapon specialization. Homing darts were magical +3 darts that did 1d6 damage instead of 1d3 and added +3 to accuracy and damage of attacks, as well as returning to the fighter's hand each round if the fighter didn't miss. If the fighter picked up a Belt of Storm Giant Strength, the fighter would add +12 to damage on melee and thrown weapons. So a fighter with those bonuses could have six to nine attacks dealing 1d6+17 points of damage each turn (20.5 average), and could double that number of attacks with the haste spell. This is a game in which an adult red dragon has maybe 80 hit points, and the Tarrasque is the big beefy exception with 300 HP. End Result:  All this changed when 3rd edition came. Unlike 2e, in 3e thrown weapons take the same amount of time to use as swinging a sword or shooting an arrow at someone, though they have lower damage dice (1d4 or 1d6 compared to the 1d8 of a longbow or the 2d6 of a greatsword), and piss-poor range compared to other missile weapons (ranged weapons have ranged increments, basic distances past which you get a cumulative -2 to hit for each increment. A bow has a range increment of maybe 100 feet, while a thrown weapon is lucky if it hits 20 ft. And while missile weapons can be fired up to 10 ranged increments, thrown weapons can only be thrown up to 5 increments). Ok, so thrown weapons aren't supposed to be as nice as missile weapons, it's why people prefer to use missile weapons. That's problem number 1 and it's sort of forgivable. Unfortunately, 3e has not yet begun to add insult to injury. 3e gave multiple attacks per round to everyone as part of its new Base-Attack-Bonus system, so higher level characters could full attack for more and more attacks per round. Unfortunately, this leads to problem number 2- actually having weapons on hand to throw. Melee can swing swords all encounter and archers can draw arrows with no effort at all, but if you want to throw multiple weapons, you're going to need to have them at hand because drawing a weapon takes a move action (which prevents you from making multiple attacks that round) unless you invest in the ability to Quick Draw. Even if you do, you encounter problem number 3, wherein you have to make sure you're doing enough damage. Thrown weapons can add your Strength bonus to their damage to balance out their low damage dice, but all the strength in the world won't matter if you can't hit anything because your accuracy with thrown weapons is based on your Dexterity bonus. Damage ties into problem number 4, where high level combat in 3e is dominated by magic weapons, and while a bow will pass its enhancements on to every arrow you shoot with it, thrown weapons have to be enchanted individually at great expense. If you don't enchant your weapons, you run into problem number 5, where there are a large swath of high-level monsters that have what's known as Damage Reduction (or DR for short), which basically takes a chunk off of your damage if you don't have the right weapon. Having a non-magical weapon in higher level games is a great way to fail against DR. Even if you enchant all of your thrown weapons, you're still going to run into DR that requires things like silver, cold iron, adamantine or holy weapons to bypass, and it's a lot cheaper for an archer to carry around a handful of odd arrows than someone throwing handaxes or daggers, especially since the archer doesn't need to individually enchant them. Of course, even if you have all your contingency weapons nice and ready and have the Quick Draw necessary to throw all of your weapons, you're going to run into problem number 6, namely that you have taken a stash of expensive magical items and thrown them away. What are you going to do next round? Guess you're going to have to take all those expensive magic items and pay money to make them returning so they boomerang back to you. Oh, you did that? Enjoy problem number 7, where returning weapons only return at the start of your next turn, so you need as many weapons to throw as you have attacks per round, including your obscure metal weapons (I hope no one hasted you!). Which leads nicely into problems numbers 8 and 9, where your expensive returning weapons only return to the spot you threw it from (here's hoping you didn't take a 5 ft step as a free action after you attacked), and you can only catch them if you have a free hand. Thrown weapons in 3e (and subsequently in Pathfinder) are so incredibly terrible that I am convinced that one of the design team must have had a tragic family accident with a rogue boomerang and subsequently swore vengeance on all flung projectiles. Either that, or they were designed by someone who really hates Batman.  There are options in some of the various books like Tome of Battle where you can negate some of the penalties, but in most cases if you want to shoot things from a distance you'd best pack a bow. If you want to shoot things from a distance and take advantage of your high Strength modifier, you'd best pack a composite bow. Oh, and spend two feats to achieve a basic enough level of competency where don't have to worry about accidentally shooting your allies in the face. 
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Aug 21, 2013 00:58
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Golems Golems. A grab bag selection of opponents that have roots in both Jewish mythology and 19th century gothic horror, golems have a long history in D&D as the servants of casters, constructed from whatever happened to be lying around. Mindless but powerful, the elemental spirit that powers a golem renders it immune to all but a small selection of magic depending on its composition (golems made from clay or stone are vulnerable to spells that move or alter stone and earth, for example) as well as non-magical weapons (or even less potent magical weapons in the case of the more dangerous iron golems, who required +3 weapons or greater to harm them). Though unintelligent and physically slow, their physical power, host of immunities made them a challenge to face in combat for all but the most skilled of warriors. And then we get to 3e. In 3e, the weapon immunity of monsters was replaced with Damage Reduction, which took off a certain amount of your damage if you didn't have the right weapon. In theory, you could power through the DR and still do some damage with a big enough attack. And this worked with creatures who had DR 5, 10 or 15, but when an Iron Golem had DR 50/+3, you weren't even going to scratch it without a huge attack (especially since golems are immune to critical hits in 3e since they have no vital organs to stab). The Iron Golem's DR 50 was admittedly an outsider by 3.0e standards, even the Tarrasque itself had only DR 25/+5. With 3.5e, they decided to wind back Damage Reduction so it no longer required a certain magical bonus or better, likening it to an amusement park sign that said "you must be at least this tall to fight the monster" and admitting that DR numbers were probably way too high to make things fun without the right weapon. Thus, they wound back the numbers and focused more on things like your weapon's material composition. So the iron golem went from DR 50/+3 to DR 15/adamantine. Of course, the thing about material-based DR is that things get annoying when you have to carry three different weapons to deal with DR that requires Cold Iron, Silver, or Adamantine but at least it wasn't quite as high. One other interesting thing about golems in 3.5e- they went from "[GOLEM] is immune to all spells, spell-like abilities and supernatural effects" (barring exceptions that followed) to "[GOLEM] is immune to any spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance" (usual exceptions that followed). Spell Resistance is the innate ability of certain creatures to resist spells cast on them, requiring a certain degree of luck/magical skill to pierce through it, represented in the form of a caster level check (1d20 + your character's caster level + any additional bonus from feats or your kimono and the like) against a target number, with the usual assumption that most monsters will have their SR breached by an on-level caster about half the time. Golems effectively have infinite/unbeatable spell resistance (which is similarly used with the Spell Immunity spell).Imagine a car on a long road trip with two kids sitting in the back. After a while, boredom sets in and Kid A starts poking Kid B in order to get a reaction. Kid B complains, and the parents tell Kid A to stop touching Kid B. After about a minute, Kid A picks up a crayon and starts poking Kid B again. Kid B complains once more, only for Kid A to say "What? I'm not the one who is touching you, the crayon is." Now imagine that the parents agree with Kid A's analysis and tell Kid B to stop whining, and you'll have an accurate model of a wizard's relationship with Spell Resistance. Spell Resistance can be an effective defense against magic that directly affects a target, but offers no real defense against indirect spells. So SR will protect you against being disintegrated or lifted by telekinesis, but it won't prevent a wizard from using those same spells to disintegrate the floor beneath your feet or throw a boulder at you. But the thing is, a wizard doesn't even have to be all that creative in order to circumvent SR, as there are plenty of spells that simply ignore SR altogether. The majority of them are Conjuration spells, operating under the assumption that SR doesn't matter if a wizard summons a rock above your head- you're still going to get hit by a big old real rock. Of course, this assumption is stretched to its limits when you start comparing conjuration to evocation spells- a pile of hailstones conjured in the air bypasses SR, while line of ice slivers created through evocation does not. This is because the conjuration spell is a conjuration (creation) spell which "creates objects or effects on the spot", while evocation merely manipulates magical energy "to create something out of nothing". Insert hand-wavey explanation about how it's fine because evocation offers a higher potential for damage and it makes sense because magic. But direct damage is for chumps, let's play with the real stars of the spell list- debilitating status effects. Grease creates a zone of control that knocks creatures on their asses if they fail a Reflex save, Glitterdust blinds targets for one round per level if they fail a Will save and thwarts attempts at hiding, while Web ties down anyone who gets caught in the area. All three are low-level conjuration spells that ignore SR. If you feel like stepping it up, why not go for a "no save, no SR" conjuration like Solid Fog or add in some pepper with Acid Fog so you can murder your foes as you keep them unable to attack or move much. Pathfinder decided that the no-SR conjuration list wasn't quite complete and introduced the fun line of extradimensional trapdoors starting with Create Pit, and allowing you to upgrade to add spikes, acid,or thrashing walls, with each upgrade increasing the maximum depth of the pit. Well, you have a host of spells that can bypass a golem's immunity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be able to beat the golem, right? Monsters and 3e/PF are designed by giving them class levels if they're humanoids (usually), or hit dice of a respective monster type if they're not. Monster hit dice are like character levels in that they determine things like hit points, skills, saves and attack bonuses. In the case of a golem, it uses construct hit dice, which provide a good BAB and d10 HP like a fighter, but while a fighter has a good Fortitude save but poor Reflex and Will saves, a construct has no good saves whatsoever. A creature's saves are further modified by its ability scores, so let's see how things stack up. Fortitude is modified by your Constitution score, but as constructs aren't alive, they have a Con score of "-", which is treated as a +0 modifier. Reflex is modified by your Dexterity score, but golems are slow and plodding, so they don't have good Dex scores, with most having negative Dex modifiers (with the exception of the mithral golem). Will is modified by your Wisdom score, but as golems aren't particularly known for their wisdom either, they tend to have scores of 10 or 11 for a +0 modifier. So their Fort, Ref and Will saves start lovely and go nowhere after that. This leads us to the once-dreaded iron golem, a monster suitable for a 13th-level foe whose saves top out a whopping +6 Fort, +5 Ref, +6 Will- which would have been impressive for a 3rd level foe and underwhelming for a 7th level foe. Its adamantine big brother isn't much better, a 19th level opponent with saves appropriate for a 7th- to 11th-level opponent. Thus the odds of the golem blowing its saves toppling blindly into a deep acid pit are pretty drat good. Because a golem isn't living, it doesn't have a Constitution score and thus doesn't get bonus hit points per hit dice, with only a generic construct size bonus to HP, thus our CR 13 iron golem has HP appropriate for a CR 11 monster, and the CR 19 Adamantine Golem has HP appropriate for a CR 14 monster. There's still the DR/adamantine to deal with for the iron golem (and DR 15/epic for the adamantine golem, requiring a +6 or greater weapon to deal with it), but fortunately Pathfinder allows for +3 or higher weapons to overcome DR based on their enhancements even if you're not packing the right weapon (though getting an adamantine weapon is just a good buy- only 3000 gp for the ability to carve stone or steel like butter and make it more difficult for opponents to damage your weapon in return). Additionally, golems in Pathfinder are no longer immune to critical hits and sneak attacks. So assuming you can save yourself from being punched in the face by a golem's heavy blows, mid-level characters should have little trouble carving its lackluster HP count to pieces. Golems not only aren't living, but most are also mindless as well and thus have an Intelligence score of "-", which means that don't get any feats or skill points whatsoever. So you might want a powerful adamantine golem to stand an eternal watch over your hidden fortress, but with no Wisdom modifier and no skill points, your adamantine golem has a Perception score of +0, meaning it's as valuable of a watchman as Mr. Magoo. Even if a first level character could be killed by a single attack, that character could still have decent odds of being able to sneak by or deceive the golem, and once the character hits +20 or more to a skill check, the golem basically can't win no matter what comes up on the d20. No skill points also means that its jumping and climbing abilities are absolutely terrible, so if it falls into a hungry pit it needs 40 strength to have even a 5% chance of climbing its (quite slow) speed every round (with a 20% chance of doing nothing each round and a 75% chance of losing all progress and falling back down to the bottom). A lack of feats also means a lack of any combat options more sophisticated than "golem smash" or any feat-based way of shoring up the golem's abysmal saves. What was designed to be a terrifying unstoppable murder-bot turns out to be a foe that can be trivially thwarted by throwing glitter in its face and watching it fall down a hole. Golems are pretty much what happens when you turn the Terminator into a Home Alone villain.
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Sep 1, 2013 23:20
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It Takes Teamwork D&D has a long and storied tradition of armed gangs of violent vandals breaking into homes and looting them of anything of value, but later editions have tried to make them into not just a band of homicidal vagrants, but also a family. 3.5e's big attempt came in the form of Teamwork Benefits, which were sort of like "feats" for your party. A team was two-to-eight intelligent creatures (though animal companions with the "teamwork" trick could also count) and your team had one teamwork benefit slot per 4 HD of the lowest-HD member of the team. The definition of team definitely approached "grandfather's axe" levels since you could replace missing team-mates with two weeks of training to get into the swing of the group's style. Oddly enough, it was easy enough to get around the teamwork limitation if you Wolverine'd yourself out into several different teams at the same time, or even the same team members counting as several different teams each with their own benefits, though you did have to train for four weeks per year to maintain the team benefit (but the weeks didn't have to be consecutive). Anyways, Teamwork benefits functioned sort of like feats in that they each had a prerequisite that you needed to meet, but there was a greater prerequisite for the team leader and then a lesser prerequisite for individual team members (so you might need 8 ranks of Hide/Move Silently to be a stealth team leader, but only one rank to be a member). Team leaders also needed an Intelligence of 8 or higher, so no letting your dog lead. You always needed at least one member who met the prereqs for leader in order to use the teamwork ability, though you could have up to seven members so long as they met the member prerequisites. So, what sort of benefits could you get from working together? Well, not murdering each other as hard, for one. There were benefits to grant all members of your team the ability to dodge AoE spells from friendly targets as if using evasion, as well as reduce the penalty for firing into melee or enemies gaining cover from your allies, but you could also boost things like morale checks. There were some oddly-specific benefits such as one that was only worthwhile if everyone in the team was part of a cavalry unit, or if your party had a specific urge to break grapples, make bull rushes to push foes, or use battering rams, but there were also generically useful ones such as the ability to pile into a flank, spam spells to lower subsequent Reflex saves, travel at full speed while being stealthy or make free Spot/Listen checks each round. There was even the teamwork ability that allowed you to throw yourself in front of attacks aimed at your glorious casting masters (though it was only for attacks provoked by casting, which most casters stopped provoking by mid levels) or slap your allies out of mind-control effects. Less useful were the oddly-specific ones such as one focused on listening at doorways or the one that let your allies automatically stabilize dying creatures, but only if one ally had already failed to do so this round- two allies wasting their turn not doing something important isn't all that hot in a game of skill check boosters and healing magic. Still, it's a free boost your capabilities, which isn't all that bad. The DMG II also introduced rules for a companion spirit, which required party members to invest gold and XP to benefit from a shared magical ability- and this one at least limited you to one companion spirit per person (though the same spirit could be shared by up to eight members). Some interesting options, but let's move on. Over in Pathfinder, they seem to have taken inspiration from the 3e Teamwork Benefits and introduced the concept of Teamwork Feats. Unlike Teamwork Benefits, Teamwork Feats are actual feats which you take that work under certain circumstances if one or more allies also has the same feat. Unfortunately, while most of the time building a character just involves picking up things that are interesting to you, Teamwork feats require you to not only figure out which ones are interesting enough to purchase with your precious feat slots, but are interesting enough to convince as many of your team members as possible to buy in as well. This can be tricky enough with a regular group, and is nothing sort of an exercise in frustration if you play in weekly pick-up games at your friendly local game shop. (4e has a similar system, with the concept of things like Tribal and Guild feats, where you spend feat slots to gain abilities that increase in power if other party members also have the same feat. Unfortunately, most of them aren't very exciting, which leads me to believe they were originally designed as a DM option that could be added on to an existing group like Teamwork Benefits before it got shunted over into the feat section- otherwise most of them just really aren't worth it if your DM isn't going to be handing them out as an accent to highlight your particular group's way of doing things.) So, what happens if you take a Teamwork feat and no one else in the party does? Well, most of the time, you're up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Still, in their attempt to get people using the system, they did include some options. The Cavalier class designed to favor mounted combat and challenging foes, also has the Tactician ability, granting Cavaliers a Teamwork feat as a bonus feat and letting them share it with allies within 30 ft for a few rounds per day based on level, and do this a number of times per day equal to one plus one per every five levels gained. As they level, they gain additional bonus feats and can eventually share up to two of any of their Teamwork feats as a swift action instead of a standard action when using this ability. Of course, this only means you can benefit from your Teamwork feats for a very small amount of time each day at the earliest levels, which isn't much help if you get into multiple fights. This is not an uncommon ability. The helpfully-named Tactician is a fighter archetype that improves the fighter's skills somewhat, adds a few minor bonuses that require way too many levels in order to pay off, and lets the fighter pick up additional Teamwork or Skill Focus feats with fighter bonus feats. Unfortunately for the tactician, investing heavily in Teamwork feats is all but doomed to failure in most parties, since very few characters can afford to keep up with a fighter when it comes to feat expenditure, so investing in a pile of Teamwork feats won't accomplish all that much. True, it gives you more options for your Tactician ability, but if you've got a pile of teamwork feats you've probably spent well past the point of diminishing returns for an ability you use four times per day. In fact, it's doubly troubling since the Tactician only gets the Tactician ability, and not the Cavalier's Greater Tactician or Master Tactician abilities, so it's not hard to argue that the only feat you can share is that single bonus Teamwork feat you got with Tactician. It's a hard life for a fighter. If you want to see one of the pinnacles of Teamwork, look no further than the Inquisitor another class introduced in the Advanced Player's Guide along with Teamwork Feats (and the Cavalier). The Inquisitor receives a bonus Teamwork feat every three levels, and can choose to spend a standard action a few times each day to replace the Inquisitor's most recently-gained teamwork feat with a different one, effectively granting the Inquisitor a "try before you buy" set-up when it comes to teamwork feats. The Inquisitor also gains one special ability- Solo Tactics. This ability lets the inquisitor treat all allies as though they had the same Teamwork feats as the Inquisitor for the purpose of activating the Inquisitor's own feats. Since "allies" is a fairly wide category that can include everything from fellow party members to animal companions to familiars to summoned monsters, this ability offers quite a bit of flexibility. So the class that gets the most out of Teamwork feats is the one that doesn't really need to act as part of a team and doesn't need to devote much in the way of effort to learning teamwork. Similarly, valet familiars are considered to have the same Teamwork feats as their owner, which can be fairly handy if you've got the right Teamwork feat and familiar (your average familiar won't help all that much with combat feats, but the right familiar can). Out of all the teamwork users, perhaps the only class that can even make an effort to really work as a team is the paladin. Specifically, the Holy Tactician archetype, who doesn't get as many bonus teamwork feats as some of the others, but does have the ability to hand out a teamwork feat the paladin possesses as a bonus to allies within 30 ft. While I suspect it's supposed to be a "you have this bonus feat as long as you're within 30 ft or until the paladin changes it" but there's not really a listed duration or distance other than the requirement that you be able to see and hear the paladin. So you could stand next to a paladin during the war, go off and live your life, then catch sight of the paladin in a crowd and then it all comes back to you. So, assuming you and your party can somehow settle on some Teamwork feats, what exactly can you get? Well, it varies. Some of them are oddly specific. Brutal Grappler, a feat that allows you and your allies to all damage a creature that you're all grappling instead of limiting it to just one of you. Grappling is already a rather specialized fighting style, and this one not only requires you to have multiple people who share your hobby, but that all of you also be orcs or half-orcs, making it a rather DM encounter-specific gimmick feat unless you can somehow convince your friends that the world is facing a dire shortage of orcish luchadores. Then you have a feat like Combat Medic. Character focused on providing medical aid in the heat of battle- sounds like a solid-enough concept, right? As for the feats effects, when you use the Heal skill to provide First Aid to stabilize a character who's bleeding to death or treat caltrop injuries or poison, you can take 10 to achieve average results and don't provoke Attacks of Opportunity when doing so. Attacks of opportunity represent you basically blundering into the path of an enemy weapon or providing a large enough opening due to being distracted that the enemy can take a swing at you, but how often do you make Heal checks to stabilize or remove caltrops while under fire compared to just having someone cast a healing spell for far greater effect? While taking 10 is good for getting an average, dependable result on a die roll, treating caltrops and stabilizing characters is DC 15, something that most healers can effortlessly hit by mid-level. Poison does tend to scale up in difficulty as you level, so taking 10 and avoiding AoOs at higher levels could be somewhat useful, but then again immunity to poison isn't too hard to pick up via spell or magic item. Still, not everyone reaches high levels, so maybe a low-level character would get some use out of it as a day-to-day non-magical healer who tends to the wounded. One tiny little problem though- Combat Medic is still a Teamwork Feat, and thus requires the subject to also the feat, thus Combat Medics can only treat other Combat Medics. "Physician, heal thyself" indeed. Unless you've got a Holy Tactician or Solo Tactics, good luck getting any use of this one. Enfilading Fire is a feat that allows you to get a +2 bonus to your ranged attacks when one or more allies are flanking a foe. A fair enough concept, and several feats like this exist in games such as 4e to allow ranged characters to benefit from their allies' tactical positioning. Unfortunately, this is still a Teamwork feat, and thus you're only going to get a bonus from other people who also have this feat. This wouldn't be a problem, except this ranged feat requires you to go two feats into being a ranged attacker plus have another teamwork feat before you qualify. So if you want someone to rustle up a hit bonus for you, you're going to have to convince them to spend four feats, at least three of which aren't going to be all that useful if they're going into melee to flank enemies. There are very few characters who can justify this expense (four out of your ten feats for characters who don't get bonus feats) just so you can have a lousy +2 to hit. It's nigh-unusuable without Solo Tactics or some way of sharing your teamwork feats such as Tactician (Holy or otherwise). Moving on from the valley of broken toys we get into the plains of nominal usefulness with feats that let you do things like emphasize cavalry maneuvers or bolster your defense against combat maneuvers, or even get an impromptu musical ensemble going on if you decide to play as Josie and the Pussycats. But lets get to the more thread-worthy feats. Stealth Synergy a feat that lets you make a stealth check using the highest d20 roll between you and any other ally with this feat that you can see. In theory, this can lead to some nice numbers, since it effectively lets you roll Nd20 taking the highest for your stealth checks, enabling a ninja team to be very hard to detect. Of course, as some of you might have already noticed, there's a weird disconnect connect when you've got a stealth-based feat that relies on your ability to see other stealthy people. While this is totally doable if you and your buddies are sneaking past guards while crouching behind a low wall (where line of sight is blocked between you and the guards, but not you and your friends), it's more confusing if you're sneaking around in the fog or something- if one of your friends rolls a natural 20, the stealth check may be so good that the rest of your allies can't see your stealthy friend any more, and thus can't benefit from your teamwork. Presumably your allies will call you out for being a loose cannon, but a drat good ninja. While we're on the subject of stealthiness inhibiting teamwork, the pixie is a small fairy with permanent invisibility, but no way to see invisible creatures- how do they interact with one another? True, they can suppress their invisibility, but how do you know when to let your invisibility down? Do they have some sort of third-party site to arrange meet-ups? Do they worry about someone pretending to be someone they're not in communications, or that at any given moment when they let their glamor down in their most private of times, there may be an invisible pixie silently hiding somewhere in the room? Watching them. Judging them. And now, another momentary educational diversion. Today's subject: Action Economy. Action Economy refers to the interplay of turns and both what and how much you can do on a given turn. The action part refers to the different kinds of actions you can take during your turn, like attacking, defending, casting spells, moving, using items, running away, etc. The economy comes from the fact that you are normally only limited to a certain number of actions per turn- you normally can't cast every spell, attack all your enemies, use all your items or travel an unlimited distance in one round. The opposition is normally similarly limited, and in any given encounter, you and your opponents spend actions in order to reach your objectives, possibly using your actions to halt your opponents if their objectives run counter to yours. When it comes to things like fights, a fight doesn't really end when you knock out all of your foes; rather, it ends because you've rendered all your foes unable to do anything to stop you, and death or unconsciousness is merely a rather long-term way of ensuring that- if you killed a foe only for it to announce "behold my true power!" and turn into a spooky ghost wizard, you've got more problems on your hands. Solid understanding of the Action Economy is a great way to improve your group's efficiency in combat, enabling you to take on greater challenges and expend fewer resources. When it comes to the action economy, there are many ways to limit the actions your opponents can take, the most obvious being murdering the hell out of them. Due to the way the HP system works, an opponent at 100% HP in Pathfinder fights as well as an opponent at 1% HP, but an opponent at 0% HP or lower is usually out of the fight. Thus, all other things being equal, it's usually beneficial to focus your damage on one target at a time instead of spreading it around. So if you have a party of four against four opponents, the default strategy is usually to dogpile one opponent to take it out of the fight, while if you can make multiple attacks and are facing multiple foes, it's usually better to pile it onto one foe to take it out of the equation, since three injured foes have as many actions as (and thus are usually as dangerous as) three healthy foes, but two perfectly healthy foes and one dead foe are less of a threat to your team. But when it comes to action denial, there are many possible ways to limit your foes' possible actions through control abilities, chief among them being status effects. Dead is usually the most effective status, but having a foe knocked unconscious or stunned or dazed is a form of crowd-control that can hard-lock an opponent out of a fight for several rounds, which can be pretty effective if you've got party members who can take advantage of the temporary inconvenience to upgrade your foes to a more permanent state of inaction. And while hard control effects that flat-out prohibit all action are incredibly useful, soft-control effects that merely prohibit a foe's most effective action action can be just as helpful. A big club-swinging ogre may hit like a truck, but that's all for nothing if it's out of melee range and can't move due to having its feet stuck to the floor. Or if there's a wall of fire between it and the party. Or if it's fallen and can't get up. Or if everyone is flying. Opponents miss 100% of the attacks they never make, but past that, there's the more risky method of reducing the odds of success for actions your foes actually take. Leaving a foe weakened or penalizing its attack reduce the odds of a successful attack, though even the most inaccurate attack has a 5% chance of success thanks to the "always hits" property of a natural 20 on your attack roll's twenty-sided die. But even that can be thwarted through concealment, which can give a 20% to 50% chance of missing, so there's always a chance of even more disappointment if you roll for concealment at the same time as or after you roll for an attack. The odds can also be tilted in your favor by bolstering your own defenses- in most cases a bonus to your AC is about equivalent to a penalty to your opponent's attacks (though accuracy penalties are usually safer because there are a variety of possible attacks and maneuvers that can target different defenses). Not only can you penalize the actions of your foes, but you can bolster your own actions. A big enough boost to damage means it will take fewer attacks to drop an opponent, while a boost to accuracy reduces the chances of you choking at an inopportune moment. A spell such as haste is interesting because not only does it boost your attack accuracy and defenses, but also your speed so that you can close into range faster or maneuver around obstacles better, and also gives you an extra attack per round to ensure that it takes fewer turns to drop your foe. Interestingly enough, haste in 3e didn't give you an extra attack when attacking, but an extra standard action. This meant that a fighting character could move full speed then full-attack, or maybe attack and attack again or attack and activate an item... but it also meant that a caster could cast two spells per turn. Items that gave out permanent haste were nice on a fighter, but ludicrously good on a caster who could pack more power into every action. That's the power of extra actions- they're basically extra turns. The more extra actions you can scrounge up, the faster you can stop your enemies by either using abilities to take away their actions or simply pounding them into the dirt. Spellcasters are often the best at this, since they can whistle up summoned allies so you can have more actions to attack with each round, while spells such as dominate person represent a serious action advantage because they not only stop the opponent from taking actions against you, but turn those actions against your other opponents. Back in 3e, the Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords supplement introduced the system of martial maneuvers, basically special attacks and abilities for a certain type of combat character that ranged from extraordinary variations and upscaling of things they could normally do to abilities that were basically supernatural in essence. Anyways, among those abilities was the infamous (and confusing) Iron Heart Surge. Perhaps less infamous but no less noteworthy was the ability known as White Raven Tactics. The Book of Nine Swords posted:White Raven Tactics What a magical phrase. Characters with this ability could wait until their allies went, then use it to give their allies a second turn, letting them stack turns before enemies had a chance to react. Fighters could pound away at foes, while casters could end the world. There are some even goofier options that involve exploiting some other sub-rules, but those are for another time. The important point to take from this is that extra actions are incredibly good at tilting the odds in your favor and are generally worth their weight in gold on a character who can take advantage of them. So why am I talking about all this in a write-up about Teamwork feats? So you'll understand what's yet to come. There are six Teamwork feats that can be basically called "the good ones" owing to the fact that they don't just give you extra pluses to hit or whatever, but they actually give you extra attacks. Before I continue, honorable mention goes to Lookout, a feat that lets you act in a surprise round as long as you're adjacent to an ally who wasn't surprised, though if both of you could act normally without the feat then it lets you take a regular turn during a surprise round instead of a partial turn. Normally it's in your best interest to use appropriate scouting to avoid being surprised by your enemies, but if you're stealthy enough you can gain an turn advantage over enemies when you launch a surprise attack, since you can fully unload while your opponents are limited to a single action. While a rare enough occurrence not to be worth spending a use of Tactician on, it's still solid enough that a Holy Tactician might find use for it as part of the Battlefield Acumen ability to ensure the party has a better chance in surprise rounds before switching it over to a different ability once regular combat ensues. Thus one of the best characters for launching an ambush is a paladin. Now, onto "the good ones." The simplest of these would be Target of Opportunity, lets you make an additional ranged attack as an immediate action whenever an ally with the same feat makes a ranged attack against an opponent within 30 ft of you, basically letting you shoot someone even when it's not your turn (though you only have on immediate action each round). So if you have two people with this feat who are attacking fairly close opponents, that's two extra attacks each round- not bad, especially if you can get more friends in the shooting business (though owing to the restrictions on making the attack, you're going to want archers instead of axe throwers). The prerequisites are incredibly basic and easily hit by anyone who's considering a career in archery, but if you've got Solo Tactics or some form of Tactician then you can start handing it out to people who aren't even archers, and trigger it off of the ranged attacks rolled by casters when they cast things like rays that drain or disintegrate their targets, since ranged touch attacks are still ranged attacks. Fun times. Coordinated Charge is a similar feat, one that allows you to make a charge attack as an immediate action whenever an ally with this feat charges an enemy who's within your short charge distance. Charging is nice because it lets you move a fair amount and still make an attack, or at least that was the original intention. Thing is, developers quickly introduced elements that bolstered the power of a charge attack from being a single conventional hit. One such element would be the Spirited Charge feat, which let you deal triple damage if you made a charge attack while mounted and wielding a lance, making your big hits even better. Another ability of note is Pounce, which lets you make a charge attack and make multiple attacks on the charge instead of just one. Normally reserved for large predators such as tigers and the like, it's fairly painful when a big cat slashes you five times with its claws and fangs, but it's even more painful when in the hands of a barbarian, whose big honking magic sword is probably going to hit far, far harder. Funnily enough, these two abilities stack, allowing a mounted barbarian with a lance and Spirited Charge to make several triple-damage hits on a charge, a strategy cunningly named RAGELANCEPOUNCE. In 3e, charge optimization could get even bigger, as you could pick up spells and items that doubled your damage on a charge, stacking with Spirited Charge to turn it into a 4x or even 5x damage hit (due to the way stacking multipliers worked in 3e), combined with feats that gave you a massive bonus to damage on a charge, while taking a level of barbarian to pick up the ability to pounce and multiply your damage further. It was not uncommon to be able to do thousands of points of damage to a target from one round of charging as you hit your target like a freight train. But even if you aren't devoted to charge optimization in Pathfinder, Coordinated Charge still lets you get your close-quarters combatants into the fray and dealing damage, freeing up their normal turns so that they can attack normally instead of wasting a round closing in. The feat's prerequisite of having two other Teamwork Feats before you can take this one is a harsh one, but it's still an absolutely prime choice for sharing through a Tactician (Holy or otherwise). Past that and we get into a new realm. Seize the Moment is a feat that lets you make an Attack of Opportunity whenever an ally with this feat scores a critical hit on an opponent within reach, and since it has Improved Critical as a prerequisite, that's a going to be a fair number of attacks, while Outflank improves your flanking bonus when you flank with a partner who has this feat, and also lets you make an Attack of Opportunity against a target if your flanking buddy scores a critical hit on it. Attacks of Opportunity are basically free attacks, representing your ability to seize the moment or what happens when an opponent stumbles into your whirling weapon after letting its guard down. More attacks are never a bad thing, though between the two Seize the Moment is probably the better bet if you can get allies who meet the prerequisite, since it doesn't require as much of a precision formation as Outflank (which can be hindered when you run into enemies who can't be flanked). Broken Wing Gambit represents an unusual option. Whenever hit someone with a melee attack and have this feat, you can elect to give that target a +2 to hit and damage with the next melee attack it makes against you in return, but that attack causes the target to provoke an Attack of Opportunity from each ally with this feat who's within reach. Now, an ability that modifies the target's hit chance and provokes a retaliation strike against the target if the target goes for the wrong ally might sound sort of familiar to some of you, since it's not entirely dissimilar to parts of the defender systems in 4e. Now, D&D and its kin have had a long-standing tradition of stashing the squishiest members of the team behind the party tank, but there was very little actually keeping your opponents engaged with the meat shield other than the layout of the battlefield and maybe a gentlemen's agreement with the DM. Well, not entirely- melee combatants did have some degree of danger to keep others in the fight, since characters could make a free attack against anyone who fled the melee, or all of their attacks if they had more than one. Characters could choose to withdraw from a fight and move up to 1/3 their speed without any further penalty, although their opponents could follow at 1/3 their speed without any penalty either. This was combined with some other rules regarding things like ranged weapons and spell failure to form 3e's Attack of Opportunity system. The theory behind the Attack of Opportunity system is that a free attack on your opponent should be enough to discourage your foe from bypassing your frontlines and diving into the back. The reality behind the Attack of Opportunity system is that unless you're seriously built for it, a free swing from your fighter is a fair price to pay for a chance to disrupt the caster- a fighter's sword can only take away your hit points, but a wizard's spell can take away your turn. Unless the fighter can kill you with a single attack, it's usually safer to bypass the fighter, and even if the fighter could one-shot foes there was an upper limit to the number of attacks of opportunity a fighter could make in a round, so a sufficiently large swarm of kobolds or goblins could blitz past the fighter without further problems if they didn't mind stepping over the corpses of their fallen brethren in the process. Now, 4e attempted to give the front line more teeth in the form of a system wherein certain characters and classes could mark their targets, providing the target with a -2 penalty on attacks that didn't include the marking character, representing the idea that the threat of the marking character consumed the target's attention. That in and of itself isn't entirely enough to make the grade, so if the marked target still attacks someone other than the marking character, the marking character usually has some sort of retaliation attack or punishment ability to take advantage of the lapse in focus (not unlike AoOs). This presented opponents with a tough choice- either go for the squishies and risk lower accuracy and punishment or dance with the defender and try to figure out a way past the defender's tough defenses and high HP count. Marking was inspired by the strategy of the same name used in basketball and football, though for some mysterious reason sporting analogies were completely lost on most of the RPG fanbase. Who knew? Of course, Broken Wing Gambit is still rather different from 4e's defenders in several important ways. One of them is that you have to have the Teamwork Feat and you have to fight in melee against a target in order to set this up and make it unattractive to hit you, so a Pathfinder Wizard is unlikely to get much out of this compared to what a 4e fighter can do for a 4e Wizard. The other important factor is that in 4e marks are not supposed to stack in order to prevent the target from being forced into a Catch-22 situation where the target gets stomped by two or more defenders. As it turns out, this doesn't actually work, as many defenders have non-mark-related options to inflict some pain on their foes and you can seriously pinball an opponent around with them- paladins in particular are pros at punishment-stacking and can hand out the most righteous rear end-whupping of your rapidly-shortening life if you ignore them. But while 4e defenders stack by accident, Broken Wing Gambit stacks by design- if you have N characters with this feat who activate it on a target, that target will provoke N-1 attacks of opportunity on its next attack if it strikes a Broken Wing Gambit character. The more you stack it up, the funnier this gets, though everyone has to at least hit with one melee attack in order to set up a proper catch-22 scenario. Now, those of you who have been keeping track, I mentioned that there were six good attack-enabling Teamwork feats and have only mentioned five. Well, number six is Paired Opportunist. When adjacent to an ally with this feat you gain a +4 bonus to attacks of opportunity, and more importantly you can make an attack of opportunity against any against any creature within your melee range that provokes an attack of opportunity from your adjacent ally. Now, on the surface this isn't actually all that interesting, as normally your opponents dictate when you can make attacks of opportunity by choosing to do specific actions such as moving, spellcasting, or making ranged attacks (though characters sufficiently invested in any of those things will usually have abilities that prevent them from provoking while doing it) and if an opponent within your reach provokes an attack of opportunity from an adjacent ally through moving or whatever, it probably also provokes an attack of opportunity from you. In the context of actions that normally provoke AoOs, this feat is not that great since it basically provides a +4 to hit on those attacks- nice, but not really worth building a team around since you can't control how frequently you'll be able to make AoOs. However, this is Pathfinder, and if there's one thing Pathfinder likes, it's jury-rigging existing systems to create new functions, and "provokes an attack of opportunity" is a piece of language that shows up in some unusual places... such as the AoO Teamwork Feats I mentioned earlier. While Paired Opportunist doesn't do much for conventional AoOs, what it does do is give you access to AoOs you otherwise have no goddamn business messing with. Consider a party with Paired Opportunist and Broken Wing Gambit. Normally, if N party members are engage in melee with an opponent and activate the feat, then the opponent provokes N-1 AoOs when it makes an attack against a party member, but if the party members have Paired Opportunist and are all adjacent to at least one other party member (such as by forming a line that snakes around the target), then when the opponent provokes an AoO from the other party members by attacking someone, it will also provoke an AoO from the target it's attacking. While this turns it from N-1 AoOs to N AoOs, more importantly it's a melee attack, which means that the target can use the opportunity to reset Broken Wing Gambit against the opponent's next attack, which means as long as you can keep hitting, every attack the target makes will provoke N AoOs from your team (for comparison, Broken Wing Gambit is normally N-1 AoOs, but after they're made the opponent can keep swinging at the target without fear of further retaliation). Considering many monsters are balanced around the idea of making more melee attacks than humanoids but with their individual hits being not as damaging as weapon attacks, this exchange of blows severely favors the party (especially since AoOs interrupt the triggering action, so your counter blows can land before the enemy lands an attack). Outflank offers a similar opportunity. If you have characters who are adjacent to the target and are somehow flanking it (either through a formation that links the two flanking characters through a chain of bodies, or with the use of a feat like Gang Up), then a critical hit scored by one of the flanking characters will cascade through the chain, getting back to the original character who can make an AoO as well, and if any of these AoOs score a critical hit from a flank, the whole chain starts again. It would be even easier to do this with Seize the Moment, but that brings us into an exciting episode of "Rules Lawyer Theater". Paired Opportunist states that enemies that provoke an attack of opportunity from your allies also provoke an attack of opportunity from you, but Seize the Moment merely states that when an ally scores a critical hit against the target, you may make an Attack of Opportunity, not that it provokes an Attack of Opportunity from you. This means that under a strictly literal reading of the ability it doesn't work, and also rules out some fun class features like the rogue's Opportunist ability, which lets you make an AoO against a target who's been hit in melee by one of your allies- if it said that it provokes an AoO then it would allow one attack from the rogue's allies to trigger an AoO from everyone in the chain including the original attacker. While this bit of exact language may rule out a few fun options, it's certainly not the end of the world. Cavaliers of the Order of the Star have a high-level ability that provokes AoOs against anyone who makes an attack against the cavalier or adjacent ally of the same faith, while Barbarians can take Come and Get Me as a rage power that makes enemy attacks provoke AoOs and allows them to basically cross-counter their foes before the foe can finish an attack ("kill it before it kills you" is a great defensive ability, even better than armor). When combined with Paired Opportunist you can get a lot more bang for your defense, and who knows how this stacks with Broken Wing Gambit (Paired Opportunist does not let you take more than one AoO for a given action, but is the given action "an enemy attacks, provoking an AoO" or is the action "ally activates Come and Get Me" and then "ally activates Broken Wing Gambit" as a new action?)? Combat Maneuvers are also a prime source of AoO generation, as many of the "Greater" feats for any particular manuever (Trip, Overrun, Reposition, Drag) also cause the enemy to provoke AoOs from one or more characters, which can be chained through Paired Opportunist. Viscious Stomp is another feat that makes enemies provoke AoOs from you if they fall prone in an adjacent space (including through things like slipping on a grease spell), and can stack with feats like Greater Trip or Greater Overrun to allow your party to start a hoe-down on a fallen enemy's face for something like 2N AoOs in response to a fall (while your Vicious Stomp AoO must be unarmed, their Paired Opportunist AoO is under no such restriction). Now, a party that builds around Paired Opportunist is going to run into a problem- you only get one AoO per round. Combat Reflexes adds your Dexterity modifier to the number of AoOs you can make per round, but even the most Dexterity-focused character is only going to get another 10 to 15 attacks out of it, with Strength-focused characters probably hovering somewhere around three to five extra attacks. But things get a little more interesting if you're playing the Mythic Adventures subset of the Pathfinder rules, which is supposed to make your adventures more epic and heroic like heroes of mythology. While I'll go more into details in a later post, one of the possible feats you can take in the game is Combat Reflexes (Mythic), which completely removes the cap on the number of Attacks of Opportunity you can make in a round. Another is the ability Press the Advantage, which is like Seize the Moment in that it generates AoOs from allied crits, except that it uses the magical "provokes" phrasing, allowing it to be chained through Paired Opportunist. Put them together in a party armed with weapons that have the highest crit range (kukri, cutlass, rapier, scimitar, falchion, fauchard, wakizashi, katana, nodachi) and each attack has about a 30% chance of being a critical hit and cascading into another round of attacks. The more people you have making attacks, the greater the chance you have of making more attacks. On its own Paired Opportunist has little merit, but if your party is willing to go whole-hog into finding ways to make enemies count as provoking AoOs then it's a force of destruction. In fact, one of the problems you might have is that you're just killing people too drat quickly, and Paired Opportunist isn't of much use unless you're adjacent to an ally and you both have the same enemy in reach, which can be a problem if you're standing side-by-side and your reach doesn't entirely overlap. This isn't likely to be a problem in a fight against a big beefy solo opponent like an elder dragon or the Tarrasque, but a cascade of AoOs is overkill against more conventional foes. Now, you could use something like Combat Patrol to boost your reach and shift around so you can strike at different enemies as the battle progresses, but there's one other possible route. Reach is not just a question of the area of a horizontal plane, but also a question of volume- creatures can apply their reach above and below their space. In particular, Small and Medium creatures both occupy 5 ft squares with 5 ft reach, so there's nothing stopping a halfling ninja from riding around on a half-orc barbarian to make sure that they will both be able to make AoOs against everything within reach of the other and combine it with Broken Wing Gambit or Come and Get Me to ensure that any retaliation will be harshly punished. That's Teamwork for you: On one end of the spectrum you've got the most malfunctioning medical team in the realm, on the other you get the Master Blaster Razor Disco that lets you kill the Tarrasque in one round on someone else's turn. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 19:50
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Rules of Engagement Adventuring parties have something of a reputation for being a bunch of homicidal thieves who'd sooner kill you as look at you. But hey, let's debunk those baseless accusations and show the world exactly what adventurers are made of. Let's just pretend for a moment that you wanted to get into a fight and then not murder someone... How would you do that? Well, if you wanted to make things a little less lethal, how about something nonlethal? Nonlethal damage is tracked and accumulated separately from regular damage, building up from 0 instead of winding down your HP total. Once nonlethal damage exceeds your current HP total, you go unconscious. While HP damage is regained at a rate equal to 1 HP per level after 8 hours of rest or 2 HP per level per day of bed rest, nonlethal damage is regained at a rate of 1 per level per hour, making recovery at least four to eight times faster. So, how exactly do you deal nonlethal damage? The simplest way is just to use a nonlethal weapon, which is a weapon that deals nonlethal damage instead of lethal damage (unbelievable!). So let's load up the list of weapons and go look for the ones with the "nonlethal" special ability. What do we get? Well, your characters might already be in possession of one or more nonlethal weapons right on the end of their limbs- it's the unarmed strike! Whacking someone with some part of your body such as your fists, feet, or head and you're doing nonlethal damage, so we're good, right? Not quite. Thing about unarmed attacks is that the game does not actually think all that highly of Two-Fisted Tales of fisticuff action. For starters, if you put up your dukes against a foe with a knife, you're probably not going to walk away with all of your pieces. For your average layman, taking a swing against an armed foe provokes an Attack of Opportunity in response to you thrusting your soft fleshy bits into the path of swinging metal. If for some reason you got a bunch of unarmed laymen in a room and had them start a bar brawl, each unarmed attacker would provoke an Attack of Opportunity per swing from any armed opponents, but unarmed laymen do not count as armed creatures and thus cannot make AoOs while unarmed, so the fight continues as normal in a successful resolution of what would otherwise be a "tree falls in the forest" scenario. Of course, all this can be fixed with one little feat: Improved Unarmed Strike, which not only prevents you from provoking AoOs when making unarmed attacks against armed opponents, but also allows you to deal lethal damage with your unarmed attacks and make AoOs in any situation that provokes them as though you were armed. With one little feat, anyone can throw a punch! Well... not quite. There remains the question of proficiency. Proficiency back in 2e was an optional set of sub-rules wherein you received a certain number of proficiency slots at first level and then an additional proficiency slot every X levels depending on your class. Proficiencies were broken into Weapon Proficiencies and Nonweapon Proficiencies but for the purpose of this example we'll be talking about the former (though the latter is the foundation for 3e's skill system). Your weapon proficiency slots could be spent making you proficient with individuals weapons, such as the longsword or bow (or the glaive, voulge, guisarme, glaive-guisarme or guisarme-voulge). If you weren't proficient in a weapon, you took a penalty to your attacks with it based on your class, with warriors only receiving a -2 penalty since they were supposed to have a passing familiar with all weapons, priests and rogues receiving a -3 penalty and wizards receiving a -5 penalty. In 3e they switched the system around somewhat, grouping weapons into a series of three basic categories: Simple, Martial and Exotic. Simple weapons required little to no training to use, while martial weapons required a more combat-oriented approach and exotic weapons almost always needed specialized training in order to wield one. Using a weapon you weren't proficient with resulted in a -4 penalty to your attacks made with it. Classes would then be assigned various proficiencies- most of them received proficiency in simple weapons, with combat-oriented classes such as fighters and barbarians also receiving martial weapon proficiency on top of that. Unarmed strikes are simple weapons, which means that any class proficient in simple weapons can use them without penalty. Simple weapon proficiency is a feature of all classes in the game save for two which are denied any sort of unarmed proficiency. One of those classes is the wizard, a master of arcane magic who usually eschews the physical arts of war. The other class is the monk, a master of martial arts. This is owing to a weird quirk in the rules system that comes from the interaction between 3e's new proficiency groups and the fact that it also retains individual weapon proficiencies. Let's take a look at the wizard. While many classes are proficient with simple weapons, the wizard is only proficient with a subset of the group. SRD posted:Wizards are proficient with the club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, and quarterstaff Note that this does not include the unarmed strike. I guess this makes some sort of sense, since they're scholars, not brawlers (though their sorcerer companions do receive simple weapon proficiency and can thus punch dudes out even if they're about as combat-capable as wizards). But things make considerably less sense when you have the monk. The monk is also proficient with a distinct set of weapons. SRD posted:Monks are proficient with the club, crossbow (light or heavy), dagger, handaxe, javelin, kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, shortspear, short sword, shuriken, siangham, sling, and spear. Note that this doesn't include the unarmed strike either, which makes considerably less sense when you include the fact that monks get Improved Unarmed Strike and a scaling damage with their unarmed attacks to represent the fact that they are masters of unarmed combat. It's a conflict between the rules as they are literally written and the rules as they are obviously intended, but the simple fact is that someone forgot to put the unarmed strike as a proficiency on the 3e monk, and since the monk only has a limited and closed list of proficiencies rather than a category of proficiencies, the monk is technically not as good at fighting unarmed as the rest of its class features would lead you to believe. With Pathfinder, Paizo closed this loophole with one little line in the section on weapons and proficiencies: "All characters are proficient with unarmed strikes and any natural weapons they gain from their race." Paizo says knock you out, so Wizard's gonna knock you out. Of course, while this may have fixed one obvious loophole that had been a joke for almost a decade, it did nothing to fix the other problem with fixed proficiency lists- namely the fact that Pathfinder, like 3e before it, is an expanding game. As soon as someone introduces a new simple or martial weapon, everyone with simple or martial weapon proficiency benefits from it, but those with fixed lists can't use them even if it would otherwise be a great fit. For example, rogues are proficient with "all simple weapons, plus the hand crossbow, rapier, sap, shortbow, and short sword," which gives them the entire category of simple weapons plus a smattering of weapons from the other categories that reflect their subtle fighting style. But when the Advanced Player's Guide introduces the swordcane as a new martial weapon, rogues are not proficient with it and thus miss out on their chance to be dapper as gently caress (for comparison, the 3.5e swordcane had the descriptor "rapier in a cane", which might have made it a weapon usable by rogues, or it might have just been its own weapon. If that was the case, then the similar lute bow wouldn't have been of much use to bards, the class most likely to be using lutes, since they also have a restricted weapon list). Monks tend to suffer from a more pronounced version of this restriction curse on account of the fact that Pathfinder loves to introduce new weapons with the "monk" descriptor that would let a monk use them with the monk's class features. Unfortunately, a monk is not automatically proficient with all monk weapons. Sometimes they remember to awkwardly weld it into the monk class by inserting a line in the weapon's description stating that monks are proficient with the (temple sword, for example). Sometimes they don't. To some degree, that's understandable since not everything the designers saw in martial arts movies needs to go on a monk's resume. The Monk's Spade is a monk weapon with the monk's name on it, but monks aren't actually proficient with it. This wouldn't be noteworthy were it not for the fact that it's also a martial weapon, which means a barbarian who's never seen the weapon in her life can pick it up and go to town on the next enemy that comes along, while a monk can only stare at this strange monk weapon in confusion. The other odd thing about closed lists of proficiencies is the rather peculiar way in which characters expand them. Multiclassing or going into a prestige class is the usual way to pick up new proficiencies, but another possibility exists in the feat system. If you spend a feat slot, you can pick up proficiency with a single martial weapon like a longsword. But that same feat slot could be used to pick up proficiency with a single exotic weapon that possibly possesses even greater capabilities (true, the exotic weapon proficiency feat also requires a Base Attack Bonus of +1, but this is utterly trivial to meet for anything other than a 1st level character or truly esoteric (and likely incredibly inefficient) character build). So instead of going for a longsword like a fighter you can jump straight to a katana. Despite being designed as a non-combatant class with little to no weapon experience, a wizard who wants to spend a feat on weapon proficiency has no real reason not to end up skilled with a weapon that a well-trained warrior might be completely unable to wield. Perhaps it's about compensating for something? At any rate, we've established that anyone can nonlethally punch a foe, but only someone who has invested a feat in improved unarmed strike can punch an armed foe and not get cut for it. Not killing people is hard. Unfortunately, even if you do that you're still making an unarmed strike and doing either 1d3 or 1d2 damage, which is a little bit of a let down when just whacking your foe with a stick does 1d6 damage. This actually isn't as big of a deal as it might look, since once you get to higher levels the difference between 1d3 (2 average) and 1d6 (3.5 average) evaporates when you're adding 20 to 30 points of damage to your attack from everything else, but for an unarmed specialist the trick is actually getting there first. Magic weaponry is kind of a D&D thing in the form of weapons that have been enchanted to provide a bonus to attack and damage rolls along with numerous other forms of special toys such as being perpetually on fire. Getting someone to make your fists into magic weapons is difficult (but not impossible) and can still set you back a chunk of change if your magic fists get hit by a dispel magic spell, so maybe you want something a little more permanent. An amulet of mighty fists is a magic necklace that makes your unarmed strikes (or any other form of natural weapons such as fangs, claws, or slapping someone with your tail) magical with some combination of improved accuracy, damage, and other special features (such as being perpetually on fire), just like a regular weapon! Only downside is that it costs twice as much as a regular weapon would cost and has a much lower cap on the amount of cool things you can put on it- you can spend up to 100,000 gp for a total of 5 points of special features, compared to spending 200,000 gp to buy up to 10 points of special features on your weapon. This is after the cost was lowered from the first printing where the amulet cost 2.5x as much as buying a weapon. This puts you in a rather awkward position- sure you could spend 100,000 to get fists that add +5 to your attacks and damage, but a barbarian could spend 98,000 to get a sword that adds +5 to hit and damage and is also bathed in holy fire that burns your foes. Admittedly, you can kind of come out ahead cost-wise if you have multiple natural attacks in a fight (at two different natural attacks you're breaking even with the cost of buying two weapons, but at three attacks you're saving money), but you don't have nearly as much room to maneuver when it comes to customizing your features. Not killing people is hard. But hey, what if you wanted to notkill people with something other than your fists? Let's keep looking for nonlethal weapons. One such weapon is the sap. Not much of an upgrade compared to your fists- 1d6 damage instead of 1d3, but it's a weapon that can be enchanted like a normal weapon. Unfortunately, despite having the same stats as picking up a stick from the ground and beating your foes (nonlethally) with it, it's a martial weapon instead of a simple weapon, so there's a vast swath of classes that are only proficient in simple weapons who can't use it. Rogues are proficient in the sap as an additional proficiency, but their ninja counterparts aren't (making fisticuffs their only option). The sap is neither potent, nor prevalent when it comes to your nonlethal needs. Not killing people is hard. There aren't many other nonlethal weapons left open to the public. The cat-o'-nine-tails is a short whip that can be used to flog your enemies for nonlethal damage, but unfortunately like the sap it's a martial weapon, and unlike the sap this weapon does no damage to anyone with a thick enough hide (like many animals and monsters) or wearing any sort of armor (like most adventuring humanoids). The bigger sibling of the cat-o-nine-tails would be the whip, a weapon notable for its 15 ft reach and its ability to be wielded against opponents in close quarters. For comparison, most polearms only have a reach of around 10 ft or so) and don't really function that well if you let an opponent get up in your grill (the usual strategy then is to use a secondary weapon such as armor spikes or a spiked gauntlet to smack people who get in under your reach). Unfortunately, the whip isn't all fun and games, since it doesn't normally let you make Attacks of Opportunity against people within your reach, and if you're waving it around against people who have you within their reach then they can make an Attack of Opportunity against you while you're distracted. Furthermore, it shares the same weakness as the cat-o'-nine-tails in that it's useless against armored foes and foes with thick hides. It's also an exotic weapon, meaning not even fighters are natively proficient with it and every class who wants to use it needs to take Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Whip) as a feat. Well, every class except one- PFSRD posted:A bard is proficient with all simple weapons, plus the longsword, rapier, sap, shortsword, shortbow, and whip. But if that's not enough to deter you, maybe you can make this work. After dropping a feat on Weapon Focus (Whip) (and probably a feat on Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Whip)) you can then take the Whip Mastery feat to no longer provoke AoOs from swinging your whip around and allow you to do your choice of lethal or nonlethal damage with the whip even if your target is armored or has a thick hide. If you're not content with two to three feats for basic proficiency, you can spend another feat on Improved Whip Mastery to increase your threatened area and also allow yourself to do things like grab unattended objects with your whip and use it as a grappling hook so you can swing from place to place. With four feats down, you have a weapon that can be used almost like an additional hand- including the fact that it only does as much damage as an average humanoid's punch (which again, isn't that hot in the grand scheme of things). But hey, it has reach and it can be used to trip and disarm people... assuming you want to spend another three to five feats learning how to do that, of course (and that you don't run into the brick wall of high-level maneuver defenses). Not killing people is hard. So now you might be thinking to yourself "hey, can I notkill people with a weapon that doesn't suck?" Of course you can! Any normally lethal weapon can be used to deal nonlethal damage if the attacker takes a -4 penalty to the attack roll, representing the equivalent of whacking someone with the back of your sword or something (and similarly, any normally nonlethal weapon can be used to deal lethal damage by taking a -4 penalty to the attack roll). This penalty is on the same scale as the -4 penalty for a lack of weapon proficiency, meaning it's about as difficult to notkill someone with a weapon you know how to use as it is to kill someone with a weapon you don't know how to use. This method is not for everyone- while fighters and the like can take the -4 penalty to knock people out with greatswords or whatever, rogues can only do a nonlethal sneak attack with a weapon that normally does nonlethal damage- taking a -4 penalty with a lethal weapon just won't work. A barbarian can swing for the (nonlethal) fences with a big weapon, and a rogue can sneak attack with a giant sword (sneak attack's precision damage does not actually require all that precise of a weapon), but a rogue cannot do a nonlethal sneak attack with a lethal weapon, even if it's just whacking someone with the pommel of your dagger. 3.5e had a Subduing Strike feat that removed the -4 penalty for nonlethal melee attacks and let rogues make nonlethal sneak attacks with normally lethal melee weapons, but that feat doesn't exist in Pathfinder. There is the blade of mercy trait that lets you ignore the -4 penalty when you nonlethally damage people with bladed weapons, but it still won't let a rogue do a nonlethal sneak attack with them since a lethal weapon that ignores the penalty for nonlethal damage is not the same as a nonlethal weapon. Not killing people is hard. But while Subduing Strike may have been left in the past, one nonlethal option did make the jump to Pathfinder (mostly because it was already in the SRD). A weapon can be enchanted with the merciful property in order to add 1d6 damage and make all damage it does into nonlethal damage unless you choose to turn the property off. It's a +1 bonus, which ties back to the whole magic weapon thing. While I'm not going into the details, for the purposes of this example magic weapons basically can be thought of as a sort of point buy system where you have certain properties each worth a certain amount of points- you can get a property that adds its value to your attack and damage rolls (the "+N" you see when people talk about +3 swords or whatever), or maybe a 1 point property that makes your weapon do fire damage, or a 4 point property that lets you make an additional attack each round with the weapon. Most characters can't get more than 10 points total in one weapon, and the cost of the weapon is equal to 2000 gp multiplied by the square of the points in the weapon (so 2,000 gp for a 1 point weapon, up to 200,000 gp for a 10 point weapon). In this case, merciful is a 1 point property, but you can't make a magical weapon without at least 1 point in the attack/damage boost, so a merciful weapon would have to at least be a +1 merciful weapon, and thus be a 2 point weapon that sets you back 8,000 gp (putting it out of your reach until the early mid-game). Not killing people is hard. Paladins have the option of specially enchanting their weapons with holy power through their Divine Bond, investing a certain number of points worth of special features into them, among which can be the merciful property. The investiture only lasts a number of minutes equal to the paladin's level and can only be done a few times per day, so you're only going to get maybe an hour or so of notmurder at most. The paladin's divine bond with a weapon is chosen in place of a divine bond with an animal, so if you see a paladin riding around on a valiant steed you should watch out- that paladin probably values the steed's life more than the ability to not take yours. Can a merciful weapon be used to make nonlethal sneak attacks? ...Maybe? One interpretation would be that you do a normally lethal sneak attack and then the merciful weapon throws on the nonlethal switch letting you cold-clock your foes as needed, but there's still the problem that the rules for sneak attack state that a rogue "cannot use a weapon that deals lethal damage to deal nonlethal damage in a sneak attack, not even with the usual –4 penalty." The fact that it calls out "the usual -4 penalty" means that the game just doesn't want you dealing nonlethal sneak attacks with a lethal weapon, even one that's currently doing nonlethal damage. So if you fire up a merciful weapon and make a sneak attack with it, you may be doing nonlethal damage in a sneak attack with a weapon that normally deals lethal damage, a violation of the rules and thus justification for your DM telling you that you aren't making a sneak attack. Dickish, but still a possibly valid interpretation of the rules. Not killing people is hard. If you're not the weapon-using type, maybe you prefer to get your damage on with a nonlethal spell. While you could use something like admonishing ray, maybe you don't want to let yourself be limited by whatever the designers are willing to give you. If that's the case, take matters into your own hands with the merciful spell metamagic feat. Metamagic feats are feats that are applied to spells before you cast them to modify their effects; in the case of Merciful Spell it turns all damage into nonlethal damage. Of course, that damage still retains its type, so a merciful fire storm still sets everyone on fire... just nonlethally. Downside is that for some casters you have to prepare your spell mercifully ahead of time and even if you can spontaneously cast spells applying metamagic feats will probably require extra casting time because there's a limit to how spontaneous and flexible they will actually allow you to be. Alright, we've gotten a hold of some nonlethal damage, so let's damage something nonlethally. We're sneaking into the fortress of when an innocent servant blunders in front of us and spots us! We need to knock out the servant before an alarm is raised! We make a nonlethal attack and do 30 points of damage! The servant only has 8 HP and slumps to the floor. Success! ...Well, it would be were it not for one little detail that I might have forgotten to mention; namely that nonlethal damage in excess of a target's maximum HP is treated as lethal damage. This is because many environmental hazards such as starvation or suffocation do nonlethal damage and letting it do lethal damage after a point ensures that these things are eventually fatal (plus, if someone stomps on your head enough, you probably won't be getting back up). So we did 8 points of nonlethal damage, and then 22 points of lethal damage, putting the innocent servant at -14 HP. When living creatures are dropped below 0 HP, they fall unconscious and begin to bleed out, losing 1 HP per round unless stabilized. When a living creature is reduced to a negative HP total equal to 10 or its Constitution score (whichever is higher) through some combination of damage/bleeding out or other factors it dies. Unless the servant has a rather heroic Constitution of 15, I'm pretty sure we just nonlethally murdered someone. Not killing people is hard. If you're looking to take someone down with nonlethal damage, you basically have to do damage somewhere between the target's HP total and 2x the target's HP total + the target's Constitution modifier, which as we've just demonstrated is a surprisingly narrow band when you throw a higher-level character against a lower-level foe. Further complicating things is the fact that while your HP total can go up by a factor of 20 or more as you level, your Constitution score is only going to go up by maybe five to ten points, which means you're looking at a factor of 2 or so at best. So while you can take down an opponent by doing lethal damage to get the target into the negatives, then stabilize the unconscious target, that band of "unconscious but still alive" becomes smaller and smaller as you level when compared to the target's HP and the amount of damage you can do with an attack or spell. It's not unlike trying to take a driving test in a freight train- it'll take luck and sorcery to get it to stop where you want it (it also means that at high levels you're much more likely to be hit by attacks that so much damage that it takes you from healthy and skips past the "bleeding out" stage right into the "gonna need a closed casket and a squeegee" stage). This means that at high levels you can safely knock out the evil overlord bent on world domination, but if you try to use nonlethal force on the servants and mooks whose only crime is a terrible choice in employers you're not going to do more than fill a mass grave. Verisimilitude. So, is there any way to incapacitate someone without hurting them? Well, you could try grappling. Of course, that involves dealing with a combat subsystem that requires two pages of flow charts to explain it (seriously, go look at it). Among the options is the ability to hog-tie your opponent if you have the target pinned, or if you have the target grappled and you're willing to take a -10 penalty on the check. If you have a high enough grapple bonus, you can tie it so tightly that the opponent can't even escape on a natural 20, which is pretty nice. Problem with grappling is that not only do you have to go through the joy of the grappling system, you also have to go make yourself into a grappler. If you want to be able to grapple someone without them first getting a chance to punch you in the face, you're going to need to have Improved Grapple, which also requires that you have Improved Unarmed Strike (and 13 or more Dexterity). Alternatively, invest in a magical luchador mask (seriously). At this point, it will take you at least two rounds to hog-tie someone: one round to start the grapple, and then the next round to tie them up with a -10 penalty, or pin them on the second round and then spend the third round tying them up. Hope you aren't in a hurry. If you want go faster than that, you're going to need to invest another feat in Greater Grapple to let yourself make grapple checks as a move action and make two attempts per round, so you can grab and maybe pin your opponent in one round. If you want to go faster than that, you can spend another feat on rapid grappler, theoretically allowing you to grab, pin, and then tie up an opponent in the same round... assuming you start the fight with your foe in grabbing distance, you don't gently caress up any of your rolls, you have a high enough Combat Maneuver Bonus, the foe is not two or more size categories larger than you, your foe does not possess abilities like freedom of movement that automatically negate grappling, and your foe can't simply break or ooze through the rope. Not killing people is hard, though at least hog-tying your foe works on creatures like undead and constructs who are hard to take intact since they're otherwise immune to nonlethal damage and are destroyed at 0 HP instead of falling unconscious... assuming the undead in question isn't an incorporeal ghost who floats out of your grasp. Hope you only need to deal with one foe at a time, and that your target isn't prone to shouting and screaming and alerting its allies as you make with the roping, otherwise you're going to need to invest in magical silence or maybe a feat or two to learn to choke people unconscious over a few rounds. Alternatively you can just cast one of a host of spells to harmlessly render your foes unconscious or paralyzed and then subdue them from there. Not killing people is easy. So, once you've successfully notkilled someone, then what do you do? Well, most obvious solution would be to loot their asses of anything harmful/valuable, but then what? Maybe you could just leave them there and hoped that they learned not to mess with you in the future? It won't help if you got into a fight in the middle of the woods and you leave them unconscious in wolf territory, but that's not really your problem, is it? You could do something like extend the hand of mercy to those you notkilled, discuss your differences and work together to improve yourselves and create a better world, but the overlord probably has thousands of minions and putting them all through evilholics anonymous sort of sounds like work. What else can you do? The interesting thing about being knocked unconscious is that not only are you physically at the mercy of those in the immediate area, but you're mentally vulnerable as well. Unconscious targets are automatically considered willing for any spell cast on them. This doesn't mean that they automatically fail saves, but it does have an interesting effect on the outcome of some spells. The most obvious use would be through teleportation spells which are normally restricted to taking you and willing creatures wherever you need to go, but with this rule you can knock someone out, grab them and then get out of the area, spiriting them away to another plane or planet as appropriate. Once you've isolated your victim, what next? Well, you could forge a telepathic bond between your victims, yourself and maybe your allies, letting you mentally speak to one another even across vast distances. If you felt like dropping 12,500 gp you could make it a permanent link, which is admittedly pricey. Still, it lets you be the voice in the back of someone's mind (and makes your target the voice in the back of your mind) until the link is severed, which can be pretty difficult to do if you build around preventing it. Good for constant moral support or just messing with someone until they die. If that's not enough for you, perhaps you'd like to assume direct control over your target's body for a couple of hours, long enough to maybe grab a few things from the target's headquarters, maybe commit a few reputation-bending mistakes or make some bold statements on policy. Or you could totally ace your target's midterm. Just be sure to leave your body somewhere safe and don't forget to take care of your target's body before the spell runs out ("take care of" may include dismissing the spell when your target has already fallen a few hundred feet off a cliff and has yet to hit bottom). If you're feeling more merciful, simply afflict them with a magical brand that will activate and horribly curse the target when it does something you prohibit. That is an ethical thing to do, right? Teleportation, mind linkage, even turning your target into an animal or a gas are interesting and all, but if you have an unconscious creature in front of you, what other spells could you use to take advantage of this opportunity? Well, they could get married. See, Pathfinder is fond of providing mechanical rules for things that quite frankly have no need for mechanical rules. One of these is a 1st level clerical spell called ceremony that allows a cleric to officiate over an eight-hour religious ceremony to provide the participants with a spiritual fulfillment- chiefly in the form of a numbers boost. Marriage ceremonies are just one of the many possible functions; others include funerals, naming ceremonies and any other particular holy celebration the faith might have. These ceremonies require the participation of one or more willing creatures, and as we've already mentioned unconscious individuals are considered willing targets for the purpose of spells. This probably isn't legally binding, and it's difficult to think of the cleric whose god would allow such a thing other than a deity or demigod of scams and general shenanigans (or a player character, but that is a tale for another time), but if you've ever been unconscious for eight hours straight you just might have been married without knowing it. Since creatures recover their level in nonlethal HP every hour, eight hours might be enough for a full recovery, necessitating someone who will occasionally thump one or more members of the happy couple in order to keep them from waking up before the ceremony is over. Of course, the actual mechanical benefits of marriage are rather underwhelming. (<-a sentence I cannot believe I actually wrote) A marriage ceremony provides the couple with a whopping +1 save bonus against fear and emotion effects for 1 hour per caster level of the cleric who performed the ceremony. So I guess it makes it a little harder to get post-wedding-day-jitters. It's not even the weirdest ceremony- that honor goes to the Funeral, which provides the deceased's companions and next of kin a +2 bonus on saves against death attacks on the off chance you run into assassins or banshees on the way home from a funeral. Seriously, it's a 10% increase to your chance of avoiding instant death... how and why could you even test that? (Tangent: Clerics also gain knowledge of different spell Ceremonies based on their chosen domain specializations. Clerics of Good deities with the Good domain can learn the "Festival of Benevolence" ceremony. Effect? It makes participants better at attacking evil creatures.) Naturally, there's a way to make do. If your game uses the downtime system to generate funbucks from your character's off-season business, you can take those resources and spend them on a particularly lavish ceremony in order to get an augmented blessing that lasts for a day per caster level (5 max). In the case of the wedding, that +1 bonus to saves vs. fear and emotion turns into a +2 bonus to all saves for the happy couple and up to ten other people who observe the ceremony. Use a metamagic rod to double the spell's duration and you can give a +2 bonus to saves to your entire party for the next ten days- long enough to go on quite an adventure. All you need to do is stage a Tactical Wedding. Find a couple (polygamy isn't prohibited, you just need to marry people two at time) within your alignment bracket and throw them a dream wedding. In fact, if you can get two neutral clerics (maybe an old cleric and a young cleric) so you have people who can channel positive and negative energy then you can hold a Double Tactical Wedding to get two +2 bonuses that stack with one another. The Tactical Wedding is not the only holiday in your arsenal, just the most convenient. The Tactical Funeral requires a corpse, the Tactical Naming Day an infant, and the Tactical Fete Day may or may not be limited by your calendar unless you're part of a faith with as many feast days as the Catholic Church. The Tactical Wedding just requires two people, and you'll still keep your bonuses if it's shortly followed by the Tactical Divorce. If you can't find a couple, improvise; any two living creatures who are willing/unconscious will do, so you can throw a wedding for a pair of sleeping kittens if you can't find anyone else who's up for it. Sadly, "living creatures" disqualifies undead and constructs- robosexuals are frowned upon, the Cullen/Swan union is an abomination in the eyes of the gods and it will never be a nice day for a Wight Wedding. If you can get past that it's open season; on Golarion it's not the gays who anger pundits by ruining the sanctity of marriage, it's those goddamn adventurers. Not killing people in 3e/Pathfinder is hard, but occasionally lucrative. What about over in D&D 4e? Well, nonlethal damage doesn't exist; the decision to take a target alive is made whenever you land a blow that knocks the target to 0 HP or lower. If you want to kill it, it dies, otherwise you can choose to leave it unconscious until it receives healing. Negative HP isn't tracked for monsters and NPCs, only for player characters, and the negative threshold has been expanded to 1/2 the character's maximum HP count to make sure that your allies at least have a chance to save you from your impending demise. Not killing people is easy, even if you were totally trying to kill them last round and then just changed your mind. It won't stop your allies from killing your prisoner on their own turns if they really want to, but that's a different problem. If no healing is provided, the enemy will usually revive after a short rest (around 5 minutes) with 1 HP, giving you plenty of time to disarm and disable the foe before that happens. Should that not be enough, there's an item called the Gloves of the Bounty Hunter which makes it so when you choose to knock a foe unconscious that foe will be disabled until after a long rest (usually at least six hours). You don't even need to buy a pair for every member of the party, simply get one and wait for your foe to come to after 5 minutes before the glove wearer knocks 'em out again and you've bought yourself some time. So, what are you going to do with that time? In the switch to 4e, many of the less combat-oriented spells were converted to rituals, which allowed you to spend a few minutes and some ritual components and maybe make some skill checks to accomplish magical utility effects like opening locks, curing diseases or teleporting to new places. Rituals themselves are not entirely a 4e invention, as they owe much to the Incantations developed as a variant magic system in 3e's Unearthed Arcana, with my personal favorite of the ones being the one where you sit in a hut and tell stories about vikings, then vision quest so hard that the hut catches fire and you end up in Ysgard. While not a perfect system, it does allow characters to not have to choose between combat spells and wildly swingy utility spells that could either effortlessly solve a problem or just as likely never be used that day. Of course, a Pathfinder wizard with fast study never had to deal with that decision- just leave a quarter to half of your spell slots open each day and spend a few minutes boning up whenever you need a combat spell or esoteric utility spell. Other interesting thing about the ritual system is that technically anyone could access it by taking a the Ritual Caster feat if they already had training in the Arcana or Religion skill. Your fighter most likely wouldn't have as much skill at rituals as a dedicated cleric, wizard, or druid, but if you went out of your way to pick up the feat and the skill you could probably learn a few interesting tricks. When it comes to unconscious enemies there are a fair amount of rituals you can choose from that let you do things like apply a Mark of Justice imprison your foe in a tree Fern Gully style, but I've rambled on long enough so I'll just get to the point: What do I think is the most interesting ritual you can use on a prisoner? That would be this one: Dragon 417 posted:Dream Concordance HELL  YEAH  It's by far my favorite ritual in the entire game, just loaded with story potential. And the best part is that since it doesn't require a skill check, anyone with Ritual Training can use it. If the price tag bothers you, you can take the Travel Mastery feat to give you a free use of a travel ritual of your level or lower each day, double the duration of your travel rituals and increase your group's traveling speed. Crush your enemies, climb inside their heads, find out what makes them evil and then beat the crap out of it.
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Oct 3, 2013 17:50
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Tiers for Gears Are we still talking about equipment in Pathfinder? You are a fresh-faced adventurer with a chunk of coin burning a hole in your pocket and you're on a mission to equip yourself. And what options you have! Just look at all the possible weapons you can choose from! Once you factor in Eastern Weapons and even Firearms you're looking at 200 to 300 different options for getting your murder on! With so many options, it's clear that there are no right answers, only your answers in the form of the ones that best allow you to express your character concept. Now, if only that sentiment were anything close to the truth. First, an introduction to the art of analyzing weapons. All weapons have a series of qualities that are used to differentiate them. The first major group is the issue of melee vs. ranged weapons- melee weapons are used up close while ranged weapons let you put some distance between you and your foe. Ranged weapons are generally safer against foes who don't have them because you can avoid retaliatory strikes, but if melee foes gets up into your face while you're sporting a ranged weapon then they can take free attacks of opportunity against you as you shoot at people. The second group is the category of proficiency. As mentioned earlier, proficiency grew out of earlier editions where you could spend proficiency slots to gain skill with various weapons such as axes, swords and whatnot and eliminate a penalty to attack that came from wielding an unfamiliar weapon. In 3e and Pathfinder, weapons are divided up into three broad categories Simple weapons are those that require to little to no prior training and can be used by almost everyone, Martial weapons require a more advanced set of skills and Exotic weapons require specialized training that most characters don't start with. Most classes have at least simple weapon proficiency with only the wizard and monk lacking it, while martial proficiency is part of the package for a variety of "front-line" class such as barbarians, fighters, paladins and rangers. While classes may start out with things like "Proficiency: Simple and Martial Weapons", none of them start with proficiency in the entire Exotic Weapon category. Some start out with proficiency in certain exotic weapons (bards are proficient with whips for whatever reason), while others may have racial proficiencies (dwarves can treat exotic dwarven weapons as martial weapons, thus making them fair game for dwarven barbarians or whatever) and anyone can get proficiency in a single exotic weapon for the price of a feat. The third group is the "handedness" category. Weapons are further broken down into categories based on how much physical effort it takes to wield them. Light Weapons are the lightest and least unwieldy, allowing them to be used in close-quarters grapples or easily wielded in your off-hand if you're fighting with two weapons, though they gain no benefit from being wielded with both hands. One-Handed weapons can be wielded in either hand as well but are somewhat harder to dual-wield, though you can wield a one-handed weapon with both hands in order to do more damage with it by applying more of your strength bonus. Two-Handed weapons cannot be wielded with anything other than both hands and thus cannot be dual-wielded or wielded alongside a shield (unless you have more than two hands), although you do gain the increased damage bonus via your strength score from wielding it with two hands. Traditionally one-handed weapons are an appropriate place to start, with light weapons being better if you plan on dual-wielding or grappling and two-handed weapons being the choice if you want to take advantage of strength/reach or are using a ranged weapon (many projectile weapons are two-handed). Once you've chosen your general role and figured out what proficiencies are available to you, you can start comparing weapons. On the table of weapons, each weapon entry has several columns of information. Name: Self-explanatory. Cost: The basic price. Pretty self-explanatory and increasingly irrelevant as you level. The difference between a 15 gp weapon and a 20 gp weapon is important at level 1 when you've got 100 gold pieces to your name, but is pretty much pointless by the time you get your first 1000 gp at level 2, let alone having 100,000+ when you hit level 12 or higher. Damage: The dice you roll for damage before adding your miscellaneous bonuses. Your weapons damage dice assumes a weapon scaled for your size, with the parenthetical notations of (S) referring to weapon versions suited to Small characters (such as gnomes and halflings) and (M) referring to weapons suited for Medium-sized characters (such as dwarves, elves and humans). Bigger characters use larger dice and/or roll more dice, while smaller characters use smaller dice and/or roll fewer dice. There's a table for it. Critical: Critical hits are something of a common RPG term these days thanks to D&D, and in 3e/Pathfinder the way it works is that when you roll a 20-sided die to attack and the die comes up on a 20 it is considered a "critical threat" and prompts you to roll your attack again in a "confirmation roll". If your confirmation roll is also a successful hit (regardless of what you rolled- you don't have to roll a 20 again) you've scored a "critical hit" and can roll your damage again and add it to the first result, effectively doubling your damage. That's the basic function of critical hits, and different weapons can modify that further. One possible modification is the increase in the weapon's Threat Range, which is the number written before the critical multiplier and separated by a "/": a weapon with a wider threat range allows you to score critical hits on numbers other than just 20, thus allowing you to score threats more often- a weapon with a 19-20 means you can score a critical hit when the 20-sided die comes up on a 19 or 20, while a weapon with an 18-20 range can let you score critical hits when you roll an 18, 19 or 20 on a 20-sided die. Weapon threat ranges can be modified further by various feats, spells, enhancements and class features. The other possible modification is to the weapon's Critical Multiplier: The standard multiplier is x2 to roll your damage twice for effectively double damage, but some weapons can have an x3 or even an x4 for triple or even quadruple damage on your critical hits. High threat ranges are usually paired with low critical multipliers and vice-versa, so stock Critical sets tend to be a choice between more frequent critical hits or more-damaging critical hits: x2 (can also be read as 20/x2, meaning you score double damage on a natural 20) 19-20/x2 18-20/x2 x3 (can also be read as 20/x3) x4 (can also be read as 20/x4) Range: Weapons have various ranges. A range of "-" means it's a melee weapon, though some melee weapons such as spears and daggers can also be thrown, though usually to a lesser range than dedicated range weapons such as bows. Weight: The weight of the weapon. Largely irrelevant save for isolated edge cases of extremely feeble characters or DMs who are really concerned about carrying capacity. Type: The damage type of the weapon. B: Bludgeoning damage, used by weapons that smack and smash things such as hammers P: Piercing damage, used by pointy stabbing weapons such as spears and arrows S: Slashing damage, used by weapons that cut and slice such as swords and axes Weapon damage types can come into play against certain enemies (you'd have an easier time bludgeoning a skeleton rather than piercing it), and may influence how your DM rules certain actions (you might not be able to cut a chandelier's cord by using a club), but it's often secondary in most cases. Special: The weapon's special qualities. While many weapons have a "-" listed to indicate that they're not used for anything other than killing things, other weapons have certain qualities that may draw different characters. Reach is a prime quality to indicate weapons that can be used to kill people from a safe distance (though generally they don't function as well if the enemy gets inside your guard), while other weapons may be better at performing disarm, trip or grapple maneuvers in some way. And of course we had fun times trying to find nonlethal weapons in our last discussion. Generally speaking though, you don't have to pay too much attention to this category if you just want to kill things unless you're aiming for a specific build. Now, all this might seem like it's something you need to carefully weigh before making your final selection, but the truth is that most of that stuff doesn't actually matter. Once you've figured out your combat style (close quarters, two-weapon fighting, single-hand, sword-and-shield, two-handed, reach, ranged, etc) and taken a look at your proficiencies it's a lot easier to narrow down your selection. Weight is largely a non-factor (or at least, if weight is a factor you're usually better off shifting the weight from your supplies rather than your weapons and armor and make someone else carry your junk for you), and cost is a non-factor after level 1. Damage type (B/P/S) is nice but it's largely a secondary concern in most campaigns once you've made your pick since monsters that require special weapon types are somewhat rare. That leaves only a few factors left to consider. Special properties on weapons are pretty important to consider when you're building a character around a certain combat style, but the way Combat Maneuver Bonuses and Defenses skyrocket at higher levels due to the over-representation of large monsters, high ability scores, piles of hit dice with correspondingly high Base Attack Bonuses and blanket immunities to certain combat maneuvers means that if you don't start out with a maneuver concept it's a very painful process to transition into it at high levels. So if you want the fun of tripping foes even when high level foes can be effectively immune to being tripped you need to start early or not at all. On the plus side, if your character concept isn't focused around maneuvers or reach or anything like that, it's one more factor you can safely ignore. If your weapon using concept involves hitting dudes in the face for damage, there aren't really a whole lot of things you need to consider once you have your combat style locked in. Surprisingly, if you're all about the damage then how much damage your weapon actually does isn't that big of a deal either. Now, it's not a bad thing to have a larger damage die, but the difference between a weapon that has 1d8 for damage die and one that has 1d10 is the difference between 4.5 average damage and 5.5 average damage. Sure, there's a larger range, but you're talking one or two more points of damage than usual. Larger damage dice don't start really singing until you're rolling a fistful of them, the most common source being simply bulking up into larger size categories via magic. There's also the option of using Vital Strike to allow yourself to roll your weapon damage dice multiple times, but it's hampered by the fact that it's largely kind of poo poo for most characters. Damage in 3e/Pathfinder can be done by pretty much anyone but if you want to see the big numbers then you've got to realize the power of multiplication. There are tons of ways to get bonuses to damage, and the more ways you can multiply those bonuses the farther you'll go. The most essential form of attack multiplication comes from making multiple attacks, since the more hits you can rack up the more times you can apply your various bonuses. As characters grow in level they gain iterative attacks which allow them to make additional attacks in a round, albeit at a reduced chance to hit. It's not the best option, but extra damage at reduced accuracy is still extra damage. For the purposes of math, a character's damage can be thought of as broken up into three components. 1) The weapon damage dice, ranging from a dagger's 1d4 to something like 2d6 for a greatsword or 1d12 for a greataxe, henceforth abbreviated as "[W]" 2) The static bonuses that come in the form of things like a +4 bonus from having 18 strength, a +3 bonus from your +3 weapon, a +3 bonus from bard song, a +6 bonus from power attack, etc. Basically anything that's a fixed flat number or sum of numbers, hence forth referred to as "X" 3) Any additional dice of damage, such as those from things like sneak attack, or having a flaming or holy weapon. They can come in various die sizes and quantities, such as 4d6 + 2d10, but I'll just refer to the general sum as NdY (even though you could have NdY + OdZ + ...). Thus, if you're looking at your damage, you can approximate it in the following form: [W] + X + NdY Multiple attacks let you increase your damage by simply applying it multiple times. As already mentioned, since every bit counts then the more sources of damage you can apply to an attack the more damage you can do multiple times per round. So if you're doing two attacks per round, you're doing 2([W] + X + NdY) damage total (assuming your attacks all hit of course, which isn't really guaranteed). In comparison, Vital Strike only lets you roll your weapon damage twice and requires you to spend a feat to learn how to do it and also not make any additional attacks per round, thus you're trading 2([W] + X + NdY) for 2[W] + X NdY, which is an utterly terrible trade. But hey, if you're a T-rex who only makes one attack per round and rolls a bunch of weapon dice anyways, then Vital Strike your tiny little arms off. Higher weapon damage dice isn't a terrible thing, but it's largely a tertiary factor when it comes to selecting your weapon unless you have a dodecahedron fetish (hey, I won't judge). So, with cost, damage dice, weight and damage type pushed to the side, what's left? What weapon feature has the largest effect on your combat performance once you've selected your fighting style? Well, that would be your Critical hit factor. Multiplication is the key to big damage, and while making multiple attacks per round is often the biggest method, it's not a bad idea to get the most out of your other options, and critical hits are perhaps the second most common source of multipliers overall (there are more consistently-applied multipliers, but they tend to involve specialized character builds). As mentioned earlier, critical threats hits occur when you roll a natural 20 (or a lower number with the right kind of weapon) on your 20-sided die and then roll your attack again to see if it's a critical hit that does extra damage. Depending on the weapon, this is either double, triple, or quadruple damage, adding to your original damage result. While critical hits multiply damage from your weapon damage dice and your static bonuses, the rules specifically prohibit them from multiply any extra damage dice you may have. Thus, a 2x/3x/4x critical hit functions as: 2/3/4[ [W] + X ] + NdY So, when you have high-frequency/low multiplier crits and low-frequency/high multiplier crits, how do you determine which critical hit is the best? With a little bit of math. Since multipliers in 3e/PF are additive instead of being a true multiplier, each critical hit multiplier can be thought of as an additional +100% to your damage (so x2 is +100%, x3 is +200%, x4 is +300%, etc.). Then we can multiply the increase in damage by its chance of occurring to get our average increase to our damage. (This factors out the effects of the critical confirmation rolls, which would normally lower the increase in damage since you have a less than 100% of confirming it, but there are feats, spells and class features that can affect the probability and even once you've accounted for confirmation rolls the conclusion will still be the same for all but the most extreme of edge-case circumstances). Thus, for our respective critical hit combinations 20/x2 = 5% chance of +100% damage = +5% average damage 19-20/x2 = 10% chance of + 100% damage = +10% average damage 18-20/x2 = 15% chance of + 100% damage = +15% average damage 20/x3 = 5% chance of +200% damage = +10% average damage 20/x4 = 5% chance of +300% damage = +15% average damage Abilities such as Improved Critical or having a keen weapon double the weapon's threat range, meaning they can score threats on twice as many numbers (so something that normally requires a natural 20 works on a natural 19 or 20, a normal 19-20 works on 17-20 and a normal 18-20 works on 15-20), doubling the chances of occurrence and thus doubling the average damage increase from critical hits regardless of what the weapon is. Our big ticket winners are thus the 18-20/x2 and the 20/x4 weapons, which both provide a +15% average increase in damage (+30% increase when you double the threat range). In a major break from 2e's system, which only had critical hits that doubled your weapon die damage no matter the weapon, 3e's weapons were theoretically designed around tweaking elements up and down to balance each other out- a longsword does 1d8 base damage in the hands of a human and has a 19-20/x2 critical while a rapier does 1d6 base damage in the hands of a human and has a 18-20/x2 critical. Thus by taking a rapier over a longsword you're exchanging a point of damage for a 5% increase in critical hit chances. While this may seem like a valid trade that leaves both swords as options to consider, but the more static damage bonuses you can stack onto a weapon the more valuable an increased critical becomes, and 3e/PF lets you stack static bonuses to ludicrous levels. A rapier pulls ahead of the longsword somewhere around the 10 to 20 point range depending on if you're multiplying the threat range with something like Improved Critical or not, and it's not uncommon for high level characters to be throwing around 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 or even more points of damage stuck on to the end of their weapon which leads to some huge swings in damage. You probably won't really miss the point or two you lose from having a smaller die size, but you will definitely notice when you're scoring critical hits 50% to 200% more often. If you're a martial weapon user just looking for a damage boost, the weapon list suddenly becomes much shorter: Light 18-20/x2: Kukri 20/x4: Light Pick One-Handed 18-20/x2: Cutlass, Rapier, Scimitar 20/x4: Heavy Pick Two-Handed 18-20/x2: Falchion, : Nodachi20/x4: Pickaxe, Scythe, : Hooked Lance, NaginataThe list can be pared down even further if you use more options. Pathfinder has a series of critical feats that allow you to force your foes you score critical hits against to make saves or be afflicted by potentially devastating conditions such as being staggered and unable to do much during a round. Unfortunately, your critical multiplier has no effect on your critical feats, making an increased threat range (and thus increased chance of triggering) the way to go. Similarly, high-level or mythic games may offer you a chance to increase the critical multiplier on your weapon, but since it's only a flat +100% increase to critical hit damage it'll see a larger effect on a wider threat range, which again makes better use of it than the low-frequency/high-multiplier (18-20/x2+1 = 15% chance of +200% damage = +30% average damage, 20/x4+1 = 5% chance of +400% damage = +20% average damage). Higher-frequency/low multiplier crits also means that you're less likely to feel bad about "wasting" a critical hit on an enemy that's almost dead already or possessing some form of attack negation, but there's still something to be said for the charm of the "pink mist" approach of low-frequency/high multiplier critical hits even if there is no bonus for overkill. You'd think that things would get more interesting once you introduce exotic weapons into the mix, but once again there's not too much to look for. Most exotic weapons tend to be the equivalent of a martial weapon plus an extra feature or two, and this extra feature tends to be "larger weapon die" more often than not when compared to martial weapons who have similar properties. The classic comparison would be that of the bastard sword, an exotic weapon that has 1d10 damage and a 19-20/x2 critical range, meaning that it does about a point of damage more than a longsword on average. True, it can be used one-handed or two-handed for extra damage, but then again so can almost every other one-handed martial weapon. If you had to spend a feat to gain proficiency, it's largely a waste of time and character resources. Sure, it's not a bad upgrade if you get it for free and you were already going to use a longsword, but it suffers from the general exotic weapon problem of being largely a trap option. About the only exotic weapons worth mentioning are the fauchard (a trip/reach weapon with a rare 18-20/x2 critical), the elven curved blade (a rare two-handed finesse weapon with an 18-20/x2 critical), the various rope/chain weapons that are the only weapons that have the "grapple" tag for certain gimmick builds and the falcata, which is a one-handed weapon with a 19-20/x3 critical, meaning it has a 10% chance of +200% damage on a critical hit, a 20% average increase in damage that even outstrips the x4 and 18-20/x2 critical hits (though things like critical feats and multiplier boosters swing the balance back in the favor of 18-20/x2). The katana and wakizashi are somewhat better than their western counterparts ( ), but they're only worth using if you get proficiency for free as a samurai or ninja.Of course, if you think that melee have short list of options just wait until you get a look at ranged weapons. As previously mentioned, thrown weapons in 3e/PF are a poor adventurer's option, barely even valid as backup weapons. This leaves us with the weapons designed to propel projectiles at murderous speeds. Of the projectile weapons, the big three are slings, crossbows and bows. Slings and crossbows are both simple weapons and are thus capable of being used every single class- even the monk and wizard are proficient with crossbows despite not having simple weapon proficiency (monks are also proficient with the sling). Bows are martial weapons and are thus restricted to a more specialized set of classes (and elves). Of the three, slings have the worst range, worst damage, and worst critical hit multiplier (a mere 20/x2), with their biggest selling point being they're basically free- they cost nothing and can use rocks you find on the road as ammo (albeit with reduced accuracy and damage). In comparison, even a light crossbow does about twice as much damage against a target 50% farther, though it's a bit pricey for a 1st level character. But while longbows may have similar damage and range when compared to crossbows, they differ in one key point- reload time. Slings and light crossbows require a move action to reload, so you can fire a shot as a standard action then reload with your move action to ready another shot for your next turn. Meanwhile bows take a free action to reload which means you can draw arrows as quickly as you can shoot them. The restricted fire rates of crossbows and slings aren't too much of a problem at 1st level when you're only making one attack per turn to begin with, but quickly become a problem as you level. Making multiple attacks is the fastest and easiest way to multiply your damage so you can make things dead faster, and one attack per round won't even get close to the numbers you can put out by filling the air with missiles. Even before level 6 when characters first get a second attack per round, ranged characters can pick up a feat that lets them make more attacks each round. Now, if you're willing to spend a feat or two on crossbows or on slings you can lower their reload times down to a free action as well to take full advantage of multiple attacks, but compare that to spending one feat (if even that) to use a bow and then spending the rest of your feats to actually get better with it. Even once you can load a crossbow or sling as a free action, you're still going to be behind the bow user. Not only are you several feats in the hole in comparison, but bow users have access to abilities that others simply can't access. Unlike a crossbow, a bow can be turned into a composite bow, which allows you to add a bonus to damage provided you have a high enough strength bonus. Pricey, but less-so once you can afford an adaptive composite bow to let yourself make the most out your strength bonus no matter what may come your way. Extra damage is always appreciated for a missile user since the more attacks you can make each round the more times you can apply it. Slings users can add their strength modifier to their damage right out of the gate, but they don't have access to another bow trick in the form of Manyshot to fire even more arrows each round in your one-elf attempt to blot out the sun. Crossbows aren't completely without a niche, being that they're one of the few ranged weapons that don't entirely fail while underwater, and you can shoot them while prone without penalty. As for the sling, well, you could spend some feats to be able to smack dudes with it, or fire while prone? Still, while there may be merits to figuring out which melee weapon to use, when it comes to ranged weapons in 3e/PF the longbow is the unconquered king. Well, there's still firearms, but that's a tale for another time. Once you've got your weapon sorted out, it's on to the armor. Armor is broken up into three categories- light, medium, and heavy. Armor improves your Armor Class (or AC for short) by an amount equal to its armor bonus, but your AC can also be improved by your Dexterity modifier to represent your ability to dodge blows using reflexes and agility. But unlike previous editions a good Dexterity boosted your AC no matter what, in 3e and PF your ability to use Dexterity to dodge blows is limited based on how heavy the armor was- heavy armor just doesn't let you use as high of a Dexterity modifier as lighter armors. Of course, if you're not particularly agile to begin with this isn't really a concern and you're free to use the heaviest armor you're proficient with. If you do have some measure of Dexterity, then you'll notice that the thing about armor is that for the most part a one-point increase in armor bonus tends to come with a one-point decrease in the maximum Dexterity modifier you can use while in that armor. Thus armor selections tends to be partly about finding an armor that fits your Dex mod, with most armors adding up to a net gain of 8 in AC (2 armor/6 Dex on leather compared to 4 armor/4 Dex on chain shirt compared to 6 armor/2 Dex on chainmail and 8 armor/0 Dex on half-plate). The only armors that go beyond that are a net gain of 9 on certain armors (1 armor/8 Dex on padded/quilted cloth light armor, 6 armor/3 Dex on breastplate medium armor) or 10 on platemail heavy armor (9 armor/1 Dex). The other downside to heavier armor is that it reduces your movement- most characters only travel at 2/3rds speed in medium or heavy armor and have their run speed cut by 25% in heavy armor, while heavier armors come with increasing armor check penalties which penalize the skills that allow you to do things like jump, sneak or swim. While run speed isn't super important in most games, being slower in battle means it takes longer to get into a fight and it's harder to keep up with more mobile enemies. Armor check penalties tend to be a "suck it up" affair, as either you're boosting the skill enough that you can grudgingly eat a penalty to your checks or you've invested no ranks whatsoever and have made your peace with the fact that this tin can will be your coffin if you fall into deep water. Past that and it's just a question of proficiency. Only a few dedicated combat classes start out with heavy armor proficiency in Pathfinder, with most of the rest having medium and/or light armor proficiency (heavy armor classes are also proficient with medium and light, medium armor classes are also proficient with light). If you've already got the Dexterity to fill out your existing armor then it's probably not worth your time to drop feats on heavier armor, but if you suffer from a low Dexterity then dumping a feat on heavy armor proficiency and sucking up the penalties so you can wear plate probably isn't a bad idea. Wearing armor you're not proficient in means that the armor check penalty also applies to your attacks and any Strength- or Dexterity-based skill or ability check, which is more of a problem for physical combatants rather than those whose feeble frames already doom them to never succeed at such things. This recommendation goes right out the window if you're playing a caster. All armors come with an arcane spell failure chance, which is the percentage chance of your spell completely fizzling if you cast it while wearing armor, with heavier armors coming with a higher chance of caster dysfunction. This failure chance only affects spells with somatic components (spells that require you to flail your arms around), which are also spells that are hard to use when wrestling and the like. Bards, magi and summoners have the ability to ignore spell failure chance while in light armor (and only light armor), while divine casters such as clerics and oracles have no such spell failure chance because that's how gods roll (it is never really explained why divine spells with somatic components will work in armor while their arcane versions don't... maybe invisible angels guide your hands?). Of course provided that the spell doesn't have any somatic components it is entirely possible for your wizard to wander around in full plate and tower shield with no proficiency and a 100% spell failure chance while still cast spells- presumably your wizard just routinely falls over and shouts a lot. Shields aren't too different from armor, coming in several distinct flavors. Much like armor, it's a trade-off between defense (the bonus to your AC) and your character's functionality, though this time that functionality comes in the form of Armor check penalties and what you can do with your shield hand. Light shields provide the smallest AC bonus but let you carry an item in your shield hand, while bucklers provide a similar AC bonus but also let you use your shield hand in conjunction with a two-handed weapon or a weapon in your off-hand (though normally this sacrifices the defensive bonus when you do). Heavy shields provide a larger bonus than light or bucklers but have a steeper armor check penalty and don't let you use your shield hand for anything. Tower shields provide the largest AC bonus and can even be used as a wall in battle but come with a massive armor check penalty that dwarfs even full plate, have a Dexterity cap just like heavy armor, and provide a penalty to your attack rolls while you wield it in addition to not letting you use the shield hand for anything else (even whacking people with your door-sized shield). The odd part is the bizarre proficiency category- you're simply proficient in "shields" or you aren't, except it's not even that simple because tower shields are something of a late addition that was just sort of bolted onto the proficiency system and only fighters are natively proficient so for most classes it's just "[CLASS] is proficient with... and shields (except tower shields)". Why they couldn't bother to clean up their categories is beyond me. The question of whether or not to actually use a shield is pretty simple to answer- are you proficient with them and do you have a normally have a spare hand? The question of proficiency is equally easy to answer, but the question of spare hands is a bit more complicated. It goes back to your weapon selection- while just about everyone who is going to fight is going to use at least one of their hands to hold a weapon, what do you do with your other hand? The first option is just to do nothing with it and keep your hand free so you can use it for other purposes such as spellcasting or manipulating items, though in many cases you can achieve similar effects by wielding a two-handed weapon and then letting go with one hand so you can do whatever you needed to do before putting your hand back on your two-handed weapon and continuing on your way. Two-handed weapons in general provide the highest damage per individual attack through a combination of higher damage dice (which isn't that valuable) and their ability to let you get more damage out of higher strength by multiplying your bonus by 1.5x, while also being home to almost every reach weapon in the game if you feel the need to poke your enemies from a safe distance (and when combined with size-enhancing magic, they allow for more complicated zone defense strategies to keep enemies at that distance). But if you want to use your other hand for more damage and a two-hander just isn't for you then maybe you want to join the noble cause of cinematic badasses and wield two weapons. If a warrior with a sword is cool then a warrior with two swords has to be twice as cool, it's just basic math. So how do we get in on this racket? Well, just pick up a second weapon and watch in awe as you begin to completely and totally suck. See, fighting with two weapons comes with massive penalties to hit, meaning that it's easier to fight with a weapon you've never touched in your life (-4 penalty to attacks) than it is to fight with two weapons you've been using since you started out (-6 to -10 to attacks). But hey, we can fix that, just spend spend a feat to drop the penalties down to -4 if we're using two one-handed weapons, or -2 if we're using a light weapon in our off-hand. Provided you have a not-insignificant 15 Dexterity to qualify for the feat, of course. Once that's out of the way, you're on the Two-Weapon Fighting train and get to make extra attacks each round with some penalty to hit... provided you're making a full attack. Downside to the full attack is that it requires a full-round action to make multiple attacks in a round and thus eats your move action; so you're not going to be traveling more than five feet per round if you want to keep your offense rolling. If you're fighting with two weapons odds are neither has much in the way of reach so either you have to wait for your foes to come to you and hope they don't kill you during their turn, or go to them on your turn and hope they don't either move or kill you with a full attack during their turn since you've so helpfully wandered into reach. But hey, TWF means more attacks, and more attacks means more damage and more style, right? Well... We're making a fighter and we want to do some damage, so it's a decision between a two-handed fighter and a two-weapon fighter. Using the information presented further up this page, we're going to work with some 18-20/x2 weapons, so our two-handed fighter selects a falchion. Our two-weapon fighter considers the scimitars, but then decides that the attack penalty is too much at lower levels and there's only about a point of damage on average between dual-wielding scimitars and dual-wielding kukris. At lower levels, the two-weapon fighter is going to be making a single attack each round that does 2d4 + the fighter's strength bonus multiplied by 1.5 since it's a two-handed weapon, so 2d4+1.5xStr. Meanwhile our kukri-wielding fighter is going to be making two attacks, with the main hand dealing 1d4 + the fighter's strength bonus, and the off-hand dealing 1d4 + half the fighter's strength bonus, so 1d4 + Str, 1d4 + .5xStr. So the damage is equivalent, Two-Weapon Fighting just breaks it up into two attacks, providing less damage per attack but reducing the chances of you getting screwed by a bad roll and gives you more chances to crit, right? Well, not quite. The first and most obvious problem is that the two-weapon fighting is only equal to the two-handed fighting when you're in a position to make two attacks, which due to the full-round action requirement is only when you start out with someone in stabbing range, and not on things like attacks of opportunity or (default) charging. Secondly, you're taking a -2 penalty to hit so even if your two weapon attacks deal the same damage as one two-handed attack, they're not as likely to land. Even if you're both in a position to full attack, the two-handed fighter will gain a second attack per round as part of a full attack at level 6 when the fighter's BAB hits +6, and though a TWF fighter also gets a second attack at level 6 it's only with the main weapon meaning you're looking at three attacks that each deal half the damage of one of the two-handed fighter's two attacks. In order to match the number of attacks, you need another feat and a higher Dexterity score (and another feat and an even higher Dexterity at level 11 when you want to buy your third attack- not really a great trade to be honest). Even then, the fact that a TWF fighter needs such a high Dex score means that your Strenth is going to be secondary to your Dexterity and thus you won't be doing as much damage as a two-hander. Furthermore, since Strength boosts your attack rolls, your attack is going to be lower than the two-hander unless you spend yet another feat to utilize your absurdly high Dexterity modifier for attacks (but not damage, at least not with TWF). Meanwhile, while you're spending three or four feats to achieve parity with a two-hander on a full attack, that same two-hander can spend three to four feats learning how to murder dudes even better. A TWF character pays more than just feats, and has to buy twice as many magical weapons as the two-handed character despite having the same amount of money. This isn't something you can afford to cheap out on since at higher levels an overwhelming number of enemies possess Damage Reduction that reduces the damage behind each strike by a flat amount, meaning that multiple weak hits will lose more damage each round than one strong hit. Say you've got a two-hander who does 30 points of damage per hit and a two-weapon fighter who does 15 points of damage per hit. If they go up against someone with DR 10/whatever that means it takes 10 points off of each hit, and the two-hander will wind up doing 20 damage (30-10) while the two-weapon fighter will wind up doing only 10 damage (15-10 + 15-10) and it only becomes more pronounced with more attacks per round. If you want to counter this, you need to have potent weapons or a veritable poo poo-ton of obscure metals and alignments if you want to be able to bypass the DR with TWF spam, which can really rack up a bill. You might think that you can bypass some of this by using a double-weapon because you saw The Phantom Menace and thought Darth Maul was cool. Here are all the advantages to using a double weapon in Pathfinder when compared to using two individual weapons: Ok, so technically a double weapon counts as using a light weapon in the off-hand, so either you have a smaller attack penalty compared to using two one-handed or a larger damage die compared to two light weapons. But the damage die isn't that important, so it's often better to just use two light weapons. (While some may argue that there's some virtue in using a one-handed weapon paired with a light weapon, the damage die increase on the one-handed weapon isn't that important and there are a fair amount of feats and class features that are weapon-specific, so using a matching pair of light weapons has a far better rate of return for something like Improved Critical, and it's an extremely bad idea to wield mismatched weapons if you're part of a weapon-specific class such as a fighter because you're effectively sacrificing your class features half the time. If you have literally no weapon-specific abilities then you might as well mix and match for that +1 to average damage.) More importantly, almost all of the double weapons are exotic weapons (requiring an additional feat to use) and have no statistical advantage over wielding two martial weapons, plus they cost just as much money to use since you need to pay for each end of the weapon separately, you're twice as easy to disarm. Most importantly you are unlikely to loot better versions of your wacky-rear end weapon from your fallen foes, dooming you to second-rate enhancements unless you've got a crafter on your team. Thus, Two-Weapon Fighting does allow you to send a message with your character's style.  The message in question is usually "I have no idea what I'm doing." Now, TWF isn't completely useless, since it comes with one advantage- sheer number of attacks per round. This means any damage bonus you can scare up from things like bard song, sneak attack, favored enemy or smite evil can be applied twice as often to your target when compared to using a two-hander and can really add up if you stack those numbers to the sky. You may have to buy weapons twice, but anything else that gives you a damage bonus doesn't make a distinction between weapon users. Of course, stacking damage per attack works equally well with the high volume of attacks from arrow spam and has the bonus of being much easier to use since you only need to buy one weapon and don't need to muck around much with positioning from turn to turn- simply point at a dude and deliver feathered death from a safe distance. About the only advantage TWF has over arrowspam is the fact that melee weapons have the widest critical ranges- since more attacks per round means more die rolls and more chances for a critical hit and subsequent boosts to damage and the activation of certain effects such as aforementioned critical feats that render the target unable to counterattack effectively on its turn, in a specialized strategy known as "crit-fishing". The more effects you can generate through critical hits, the more havoc you'll be able to cause (even if getting into a full attack position is a battle in and of itself). For damage you're going with a two-handed build or TWF only if you know what you're doing and have a specific gimmick, so if you're not going for one of those and you don't have anything else to do with your off-hand, you might as well use a shield, right? Well, the idea is that the choice between using your off-hand for a shield vs. for a weapon (usually of the two-handed sort) is that you're making a choice between safety and and increased offense. The problem is that it's not really a choice. At the lowest levels your shield is going to provide +1 or +2 to your AC, and that number may scale up by another five points as you level, but how many attacks per fight do you think your shield will block? Unlike in professional combat sports, you don't earn points just for lasting twelve rounds in a fight. Offense ends fights, defense merely prolongs them- your shield may block an attack or two each round, but if boosting your offense results in you dropping a guy a round sooner than than normal then you've effectively blocked all of his attacks for that round, plus any other thing the target might be able to pull off via spell or other ability. Of course, if you can't stand the thought of leaving yourself unshielded, then the best strategy becomes to either get some more arms to get the best of all worlds or get a shield and then spend a bunch of feats learning how to invoke its true purpose and beat people in the head with it. Next Time: We start selecting magic items and our choices get better, then so much worse.
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Mar 16, 2014 01:25
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Previously, I promised that I was going to talk about magic items in 3e/PF. And I did, but then I accidentally deleted the entire saved draft from the forum. Will I learn from this mistake and save my work to a more reliable location when I eventually rewrite it? Probably not, but I will talk about spaceships! Back in the end of the 90s, Wizards of the Coast used their sweet Magic the Gathering cash to buy the Star Wars RPG license after it was lost by the now-bankrupt West End Games, and used their Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition mechanics to create the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. It was a product with some rather bad ideas that are somewhat thread-worthy. Then they made Star Wars Saga Edition, a revised version that incorporates some of their new ideas from their upcoming Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition mechanics. As it turns out, this was certainly not a "best of both worlds" situation, but that's a story for another time. As part of their revisions from previous versions of the RPG, WotC's designers attempted to streamline the system by making it function more like personal combat, removing things such as facing, firing arcs, shield quadrants and skill checks to turn in battle. They also allowed ships to use either the higher of the ship's defenses or one based on the pilot's level (which is not a bad idea since it makes it harder for your ship to be shot out from under you when you're a high-level character facing high-level challenges). Vehicles functioned on the same character size scale system where a humanoid might be Medium (or Small if it was a Jawa or something) while vehicles tended to start at Large and work their way up through the size categories. Large  Huge  Gargantuan  Colossal  Colossal (frigate)  Colossal (cruiser)  Colossal (station)  not a moon Size categories provided a scaling penalty to the target's Reflex defense for being bigger targets as well as Initiative and Pilot checks since it's much harder to drift race in a space station. (Ok, I lied: The penalty to Reflex and skill checks caps out at -10 for Colossal and up, meaning it's exactly as easy to drift race in the Millennium Falcon as it is in the Death Star) While your player characters use six ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma), vehicles only use three. -Strength: Representing your vehicle's general toughness and power -Dexterity: Representing maneuverability -Intelligence: Representing your ship's computer systems, including the targeting computer (There's also Constitution, which most ships don't have on account of them not being alive) Past that, ships have different speeds depending on whether they're on the character scale (where battlefield grid squares are maybe 2 meters across) or the starship scale (where squares are dozens if not hundreds of meters across), and starships have their own methods of area control in the form of using tractor beams to grapple other ships or starfighters using the Dogfight ability to ensnare a passing fighter and chase each other around trying to maneuver into place for a clear shot. In contrast to the previous edition where shields were a sort of secondary bank of hit points that were depleted by damage, shields in Saga Edition function as Damage Reduction, reducing all damage by an amount equal to the shield rating (SR)- exceed the shield rating and not only do you do damage to the hull (assuming you can breach the hull's damage reduction) but the shield rating drops by 5, allowing you to whittle down shields with volleys of fire while the enemy tries to restore it. Other than that they tried to streamline the mechanics so that it character options functioned just as well on a ship as they did on land- a soldier's skill with heavy weapons transferred over to attacks with ship guns, while a noble's ability to inspire allies to fight on could be used over the communications system and a scoundrel's skill with computers could be used to scan for enemies or keep energy flowing to the shields. Now, in a Star Wars RPG about the biggest and most expensive thing a character is likely to own and repeatedly sink money into is probably a starship, so it should come as no surprise that the makers of one of the more fiddly RPG systems came up with Starships of the Galaxy, a sourcebook full of buying, flying and upgrading your ship until you've got the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy right at your fingertips. The basic concept behind starship modifications is Emplacement Points (EP), which represent the space and power requirements of any particular subsystem. EP cost doesn't scale with the size of the ship, but neither does the amount of EP a ship has- most systems require proportional amounts of space on a starship, though some systems require ships of a certain size just because of basic power and space concerns- you're not going to fit medical bay into a starfighter, and the sheer mass of a space station means that there's no engine system in the galaxy powerful enough to propel it as fast as a starfighter. On the other hand, cost scales up to represent the sheer amount of crap you have to buy to reupholster your Star Destroyer, with a cost modifier based on the size of the ship: Huge: x1 Gargantuan: x2 Colossal: x5 Colossal (frigate): x50 Colossal (cruiser): x500 Colossal (station): x5000 While finding more money is hard, finding more emplacement points is even harder. You can stuff more systems into your ship than your EP can support, but doing so 1) increases the costs, 2) increases the difficulty of installing the system (making it more likely that you'll lose both time and money when you fail the check) and 3)makes it so that your overstressed systems have a tendency to destroy themselves at the worst possible time, taking other ship systems with them. If you want to get more EP, the cheapest method is to take advantage of the fact that every factory model ship comes with at least one spare point floating around for you to tweak your ship, and ships made by the Corellian Engineering Corporation (CEC, makers of ships including the Millennium Falcon) comes with at least 5 free EP (unless otherwise specified), with their YT-series (including the Millennium Falcon, a YT-1300) having 10 spare points. Nice. Past that and you can have a starship designer add some points to your ship, but it caps at around 3 points and it's going to get expensive (5,000 credits for the first, 15,000 for the second, and 25,000 for the third, which are all multiplied by your cost modifier) and difficult to install without wasting your time and money (DC 25 for the first, which already requires a specialist, and it goes up by 5 each time you go further into the same upgrade path). When you're all out of bonus EP, the only way to get more is to start taking poo poo out. Maybe you downgrade or remove some of your weapons to use the space for better engines and solve your problems by fleeing. Maybe you use your cargo-holds to store generators and secure your new computer system. Maybe you remove your escape pods to free up some room for some sweet guns and resolve to go down with the ship (removing escape pods on a civilian ship is illegal, incredibly obvious to the space cops, and will get you fined and/or your ship impounded and your pilot's license revoked). So let's get started.   This is the YT-2400, ship from the same people who brought you the Millennium Falcon (a YT-1300), one of the workhorse space trucks of the galaxy. As a CEC member of the YT-family, it's got 10 emplacement points for us to play with (and continues the tradition of putting the entire ship to your left), so let's get some upgrades going. 1 EP is enough to upgrade us from an x2 Hyperdrive to an x1 Hyperdrive to let us go places twice as fast. We can also spend 1 EP to upgrade our navicomputer to an advanced one. (Trivia time! Remember how in Episode IV Han Solo mentions that the Falcon will "make .5 past lightspeed" when Luke exclaims "what a piece of junk!"? The various Star Wars RPGs have used that comment to establish hyperdrive classes where the class basically demonstrates how fast you can go through hyperspace. So a Class 1 hyperdrive is the gold standard (and usually found on military ships), while a Class 2 hyperdrive is the civilian model and takes 2x as long to go through hyperspace, a Class 3 takes 3x as long, etc. The Millenium Falcon thus has a Class 0.5 hyperdrive and only takes half the amount of time to get anywhere. Should we wish to invest some effort, we can boost our x1 hyperdrive to an x.75 or even an x0.5 hyperdrive, though the latter is kind of a hanger queen and will require a fair amount of special maintenance each month to avoid issues) 2 EP will upgrade our sublight drive by 2 squares to get us to the best in our class, while 1 EP can buy Combat Thrusters to help us turn on a dime. 2 to 4 EP gets us better maneuvering jets to help boost our ship's Dexterity by 2 to 6 (which takes us from 20 to 24 Dexterity, which is pretty nice). 1 EP is enough to upgrade us from SR 30 to SR 55, the top of the line shields for a ship in our class, while 2 more means our shields regenerate even faster. Unfortunately, we're already at 12 EP of our 10 free EP! We saved a bunch of EP by just upgrading our shields, engines and hyperdrive, but if we want more space (and we don't want the space cops up in our business over the escape pods) we're going to have to toss some of our cargo space. The way this works is that you can exchange your cost modifier in tons of cargo for 1 EP. Well, we've got 150 tons of cargo space and a cost modifier of 5, so let's dump 50 tons for that 10 more points (well, 8 after we settle our account)! 1 to 3 points will give us a sensor enhancement computer that upgrades our ship's Intelligence by 2 to 6, letting us have a computer with an Intelligence of 20. 5 points left. Let's spend 1 point on a droid repair team, 1 on a medical bed for patching up after a fight, 1 point on slave circuits to reduce the crew size needed to fly this thing (and also let us buy the ability to remotely pilot it), 1 point on a hypertransceiver for long-distance communication, and 1 point on smuggler's compartment to hide our illegal junk (or ourselves) from the space cops. All-in-all, we've upgraded ourselves a nice little ship for our characters to tool around on. Let's call it the Minmaximum Falcon. But it feels like I'm forgetting something... Hmm... Oh! That's right,  GUNS Basic rundown of weaponry (in the game, at least) is that blaster cannons are basically upscaled versions of the kinds of weapons your characters carry with them (with docking guns being actual character weapons instead of starship ones), while lasers are a bit more expensive but are better focused for better range (a 25% boost to range in Saga Edition), and turbolasers are the biggest and baddest of capital ship weapons that pack a huge punch and huge range (quintuple the range of blasters, quadruple the range of lasers). Proton torpedoes are your stock miniature nuclear explosive warheads (as carried by starfighters like the X-wing), with less space required in the ship and a lower ammo capacity compared to concussion missiles (as carried by the Falcon), which can also have larger yields. Ion weapons disable systems rather than destroy ships, tractor beams let you grab other ships, and gravity well generators prevent ships from going into hyperspace. Looking at our existing weapon we've got a 5d10x2 laser cannon, which is probably a medium laser cannon with the "double" enhancement that increases the cost without increasing the EP cost. For only a point or two more we could upgrade it to a 6d10x2 quad laser (like the Falcon) or a 7d10x2 quad heavy laser. Not bad, but for two more points on top of that (and a quintupling of the cost) we could upgrade it to a 9d10x2 advanced quad heavy laser, being not entirely unlike a small turbolaser. Turbolasers, like all capital ship weapons, have the (1) footnote in the table, which indicates that it can only be mounted on "Colossal starships or larger". Hey, wait a minute... we're a Colossal starship! gently caress laser cannons, we're going turbo! Ripping out our double laser cannon only gives us one point back, and rolling back 5 points of EP we spent earlier puts us at 6. You know, we still have 100 tons of cargo space left... let's dump 50 more and get another 10 points. 1 heavy turbolaser, please! 7d10x5 damage for all our little friends! Well, that's 10 points down, 6 left... according to the rules cannon enhancements can't be used on turbolasers, so let's spend an EP to upgrade to QUAD TURBOLASERS! The rules description for a fire-linked weapon implies that it's a substitute for dual or quad cannons (an X-wing has 4 fire-linked lasers, but they can also be fired individually), but is there any rule that says we can't fire-link our quad heavy turbolasers? Given that there are heavy turbolasers on capital ships with more than 9d10x5 damage, I should certainly think we can. We'll call this little number THE GUN, because lowercase letters are too small to contain its majesty. That puts us down to 3 points left, so gently caress it, let's dump the rest of our cargo and get even more guns! Our ship will hold nothing but death and maniacal laughter!  At this point you might look at those numbers and say... "hmm... we spent 20,000 credits on a heavy turbolaser, quintupled the cost to turn it into a quad cannon and then quadrupled that cost to fire-link them. Then we bought another one.... how are we planning on paying for this?" To which I'd respond "that is a very good question..." "...I have no loving clue." Unlike the D&D game this was based on, the Star Wars RPG has no real rules as to how many credits any particular player character or group is supposed to have at any given level. There's an ability possessed by the Noble class that gives you 5k per noble level every time you level (so you can have about 1.05 million credits assuming you take it at first level and take 20 levels of noble), but money just doesn't show up all that much in the movies outside of being the vague force used to motivate Han Solo (and the people aboard Queen Admidala's ship in Episode 1). There just isn't a whole lot of cash flying around since starships are about the only major expense that player characters will have after the first few levels (unlike the treadmill of +X swords and armor in D&D). Even the designers don't have much of a clue- the Dawn of Defiance level 1 to 20 campaign released for free by WotC just has money stop showing up after about level 15 when a mission handler gives the party 10,000 credits as more of a business expense so they can buy new clothes and bribe people as part of an infiltration mission. Now, WotC also released a book called Scum & Villainy (probably my personal favorite of the entire product line), and among the many things that in the book was a job generator so the GM could figure out what sort of capers you could throw at your crew of scoundrels. Jobs ranged from things like simple scams and theft to rescues to smuggling to violent crimes like assassination, or shipjacking. Jobs would have a Challenge Level (CL) that determined how difficult they were, and paid out based on the product of the CL and the type of job. An espionage job might only pay 250 x CL credits, while smuggling could bring in 1000 x CL credits and assassination could bring in 2000 x CL credits. Hijacking/Shipjacking generates 10,000 x CL credits for the cargo/ship and Abductions are 3d6x1000 x CL for the ransom, but the PCs only keep 20% after everyone else gets a cut. If you want to afford the good stuff, you're going to make a lot of Kessel Runs. Of course, if you don't want to incrementally increase your income, you can always try to multiply it. Gambling is a great way to make money- provided you win. In Saga Edition, gambling is a Wisdom check which can be modified by the Gambler talent which gives +2 to gambling checks for each instance of the talent that you take, and gambling works one of three different ways. The first is gambler vs. gambler, where the parties involve make checks and the winner gets some percentage of the stakes- either it's a draw if the difference between the checks is 0 to 4, 1/2 the stake if the difference is 5 to 9, or all of it if the gambler wins by 10 or more. The second is gambler vs. house, where your raw check result determines how much you win or lose. <5: Lose entire stake 5-9: Lose 1/2 of stake 10-14: Break even 15-19: Win stake x2 20-24: Win stake x5 25+: Win stake x10 The third is pure chance, where you roll a d20 and see what happens 1-15: Lose entire stake 16: Lose 1/2 of stake 17: Break even 18: Win stake x2 19: Win stake x5 20: Win stake x10 Now, obviously pure chance is a great way to lose all your money, and gambling against others isn't too much better since it depends on what they're willing to wager, but playing against the house is a possibility. All you have to do is get a check result of +9 or higher and you basically can't lose. Getting a decent Wisdom score, a species that provides a boost to Wisdom, and then taking the Gambler talent a couple of times could get you there. If you can get to +14 or more then you'll always walk away with more money than you went in with. 9 to 11 levels of scoundrel and/or a prestige class that offers the Fortune talent tree could give you the talent pool you need to be the number one gambler in the galaxy. Of course, investing all your abilities into gambling means you are good at gambling and basically nothing else. In the previous edition of the game Gambling was a skill check, not an ability check, and while it had a higher threshold for winning (15-19 to break even, 20+ to start winning money), it was far easier to boost your skill check: A character with a similar level of wisdom and the investment of one or two feats could hit a +19 on Gamble checks at around the same level, but still have the class features to do other things (not that they were necessarily good class features). Now, Scum & Villainy also introduces some other rules for the more ethically-challenged characters, and one of them is cheating. When you gamble you can choose to cheat and use your Deception skill in place of your Wisdom check, but other players have a chance to roll a Perception check and catch you, and if you're playing against the house you also have to beat the DC for the house's security (DC 15 for common locations, 25 for good locations, 35 for the top of the line casinos). But the thing is that while boosting your ability check is hard, boosting your skill check is incredibly easy. Having a combination of a good charisma score (say +3 or +4) a few levels under your belt (+2 to +5), skill training (+5) and skill focus (+5) in Deception means you can get into the 14 or higher bracket easily with ease and thus always walk out of a basic casino with twice as much money as you went in with, while getting up to the point where you can reliably challenge a DC 25 security system means you're always walking out with 10x your stake, and if you can hit DC 35 reliably you're going to be rolling in the money forever. Scum & Villainy also introduces the Charlatan prestige class, which provides a fair amount of support for Deception-based characters including the ability to reroll bad checks, and also provides access to the Fortune talent tree if you want to boost your gambling abilities the legitimate way. (Interestingly enough, if you've got the Wisdom to be a good gambler and the Charisma to be a good cheat you've also got the ability scores to make yourself into a good Force user and perhaps boost your skill usage that way.) When confronted with a character who can walk into any casino in the galaxy and come out with more money 100% of the time, the advice the designers gave to troubled GMs was to have the casinos start tracking and blacklisting those characters to keep them away from the tables (much like some expert blackjack players in real life). Of course, funny thing about the Deception skill is that not only can you use it to cheat at card games, but also for things like telling lies, forging documents and creating disguises. And funny thing about Scum & Villainy is that not only does it give you the Charlatan prestige class, but it also introduces the Clawdite, a playable species of shapeshifters.  They don't actually look like this So, how much money can a Saga Edition character acquire? Now how about we grab our unreasonably affordable guns and go hunting! Hmm... Eh. Meh, but I guess it's a start.  The Kuat Drive Yards Imperial Star Destroyer is the backbone of the Imperial Navy, with a large enough supply of guns, TIE fighters and ground forces to stomp out dissidents no matter where they may live. At Challenge Level 20 it's something for high-level heroes with a fair amount of fleet support like a couple of capital ships or at least a wing or two of starfighters. We're four dipshits in a hot rod light freighter with way too many turbolasers. We're also level 13. Dipshit One is our pilot, Captain Zoom, skilled at piloting and taking levels in the Ace Pilot prestige class. Maybe a member of the Duros, a species of talented pilots, and assisted by our astromech co-pilot, who will do nothing else of interest in this story aside from provide aid. Dipshit Two is our mechanic, Ensign Gadget, currently tending to the ship's sensor array to provide valuable information to the others using a combination of Mechanics and Use Computer skills. Not actually that important, but there to fill out the crew. Dipshit Three is our ship commander, Admiral Levi a Pau'an member of the nobility who had a distinguished career as a Naval Officer and now serves as the admiral of a light freighter with three underlings and a few droids because why wouldn't they need an admiral? Dipshit Four is our gunner, General Mayhem, a soldier of fortune who specializes in heavy weapons, only to discover latent Force ability that led the soldier to be trained a Jedi and only recently became a Jedi Master! General Mayhem's species doesn't really matter that much, so our Jedi might actually be a boring old human. We pop out of hyperspace at some distance away from the destroyer (and to be honest, probably the bulk of the fleet) and roll initiative. Admiral Levi leaps into action with some words of advice, firing up Inspire Confidence and Born Leader, granting all allies aboard the ship a +1 morale bonus to attacks and skills, and a +1 insight bonus to attacks until the end of the encounter. As a Pau'an he increases the bonuses by +1 each to +2 and +2. Thus inspired, General Mayhem heroically takes a nap, activating his Jedi Master ability Serenity to put himself in a meditative trance. Captain Zoom then meanders the YT-2400 over to the destroyer. At this point you might be wondering "is the Imperial Fleet just going to let you wander on up to their warship without any immediate retaliation?" Well, yeah. There's a couple of ways to do this: Option 1: Fly Casual. It's literally a use for the Pilot skill as listed in Scum & Villainy; make a Pilot check in place of a Deception check to fly around and act like you belong there, hoping no one notices. Should the destroyer be parked in an area where a heavily-armed civilian vessel has no business hanging out (say, a war zone) then it might be a better idea to try a different approach. Option 2: Get Sneaky. There is a Stealth skill, and pilots can use their own skill at Stealth to sneak their ship around. Normally this requires some sort of concealment like cloud cover or debris, but Scum & Villainy has some starship enhancements of its own, including a coat of sensor-baffling paint (0 EP because it's just paint), which reduces your ship's sensor profile and lets you sneak around in open space provided you don't floor it or get within eyeball range (which is pretty drat close). Our pilot also can invest in talents that better allow sneaking both in and out of starships. Option 3: Use the Force. There are several different Force abilities that can be used to conceal, cloak, or move the ship in order to close the gap, but doing this will interfere with General Mayhem's power nap. We don't actually need to get all that close, just within a kilometer or so. If we can get really close that's all the better since we can enter its blindspot, but it's not exactly necessary. Then, we begin. Admiral Levi singles out the ship with Fleet Tactics and Combined Fire, explaining to the rest of the crew that they should "concentrate all fire on that Gadget mans the sensors, sending targeting information to General Mayhem. General Mayhem exits the trance and readies an attack with THE GUN, and then it's all on Captain Zoom. Now, funny thing about light freighters is that they're Colossal, a size of ship that has the unique option to mount something called a Combat Thruster, which I mentioned back when we were kitting out the Minmaximum Falcon , but I neglected to give too much information on what it actually does outside of improving maneuverability. Specifically, it makes a Colossal light freighter count as a Gargantuan starfighter for the purposes of being attacked by the big guns of enemy capital ships (which take a -20 penalty to hit targets smaller than Colossal) and for the purposes of something Starships of the Galaxy introduced: Starship Maneuvers. Starship Maneuvers are a series of special abilities that are not unlike Force powers in the game in that you spend a feat (Starship Tactics) to acquire a handful of special maneuvers, attacks, and other abilities chosen from a list, usable once battle unless you roll a natural 20 to activate them. Both Captain Zoom and General Mayhem have Starship Tactics, and each have maneuvers appropriate to the pilot and gunner respectively. The ability Captain Zoom uses is a maneuver called "Skim the Surface", which lets you pick a capital ship that's a frigate or larger, fly up to twice your ship's speed, enter its space and make a single attack that bypasses shields. If we have any gunners aboard who ready an attack for when we activate this maneuver, they will also bypass shields on their attack. Now, remember what General Mayhem did? Since Captain Zoom has a Vehicle Focus with space transports, we don't need to roll and can instead elect to just treat it as though a 10 was rolled, giving us a check result of around 30 or so and letting us make the attack with a -2 penalty to hit but ignoring the shields. Having dived beneath the destroyer's shield, General Mayhem fires. The way the Jedi Master's Serenity ability works is that once you exit the trance the next Use the Force roll or attack roll you make is an automatic natural 20, which means that an attack you make is an automatic critical hit. In D&D critical hits functioned as "roll damage again and add it to your existing damage" or +100%, while in Saga Edition they function as a straight multiplier of your existing damage. Thus things in D&D that doubled your damage (or tripled it or whatever) are added together, but in Saga Edition they multiply together. THE GUN does 11d10x5 by itself, so a critical hit would double that to a 10x multiplier- but General Mayhem has the Triple Critical feat which makes critical hits do triple damage and gives us a 15x multiplier. Heroic characters add half their level to damage with their weapons, and Starships of the Galaxy helpfully reminds us that all damage increases go inside the multiplier. So we're doing (11d10+6)x15, with maybe another 2 damage from soldier specialization and 1 from being point blank. Not bad, but then we get into the other way of increasing damage - weapon die stacking. See, there's a bunch of various abilities out that increase your damage by increasing the number of dice you roll provided you do something like aim at the target or fire from point blank range or use autofire. They're ways to increase the amount of damage you do without increasing the number of attacks, plus rolling a bucket of dice is hilarious, no? One of those is the Devastating Hit gunner maneuver, which lets you do up to three extra dice of damage to a target if you equal or exceed its defenses, which we did. Another comes from Admiral Levi's Fleet Tactics ability, which lets him designate a ship and grant all allied gunners an additional die of damage with their attacks. Levi used one other ability: Combined Fire, which keys off of the battery mechanic. We didn't just by one copy of the THE GUN, we got two, and that was because that if you have two or more ship weapons you can link them up into a battery. The extra weapons don't roll extra attacks, they just aid the first weapon by giving it an attack bonus, but the game represents the additional firepower offered by the support guns by increasing your damage by one die for every 3 points that your attack exceeds the target's Reflex defense as the combined volley burrows into your enemy's defenses. Combined Fire lets every battery targeting a specific vessel increase damage by one die for every 2 points over instead. So how well did we do? We rolled a critical hit, and then had a bunch of other bonuses from Levi, the ship, and Mayhem's own weapon skill. 20 + 13 BAB + 5 Int (targeting computer) + 1 Point Blank Shot + 2 Morale +2 Insight +4 Aid +1 Weapon Focus +1 equipment +1 Circumstance -2 Maneuver = 48, 20 points more than the Reflex defense, so an extra 10d10 damage. Adding that to the extra 3 die from Devastating Hit and 1 die from Fleet Tactics gives us a grand total of (25d10+9)x15, for an average of just under 2200 damage, ignoring shields. The Star Destroyer is instantly vaporized. But a CL 20 ship is only at the "hard" end of the challenge spectrum for a bunch of level 13 heroes... can we do better?  Behold the Executor, Vader's flagship, the "Super Star Destroyer" (or Executor-class Star Dreadnought if you're a pedantic nerd) of movie fame and all-around shitkicker with enough guns to go up against a mid-sized fleet all by itself.  Salient information: 3000 hp, 400 SR, hundreds of guns, a mountain of munitions and supplies, a few hundred thousand of the Empire's finest, dozens of starfighters, enough ground forces to subjugate a continent, and a Challenge Level of 40 indicating that we should probably be a pack of very high-level heroes traveling with most of the Rebel fleet. Now, all we have to do to take it down is increase our damage output by 50%... but we have no more EP for weapons! Enter Dipshit Five. Dipshit Five is a Protocol Droid, WD-40, whose years of service has made the droid quite adept at keeping things running smoothly. Before Admiral Levi has a chance to speak, WD-40 takes to the comms and uses the Coordinate talent to remind everyone to work together. Since WD-40 is also a leader of droids, even the R2 units in the cockpit and manning the counterpart to THE GUN will listen. Then, instead of using Fleet Tactics, Admiral Levi uses a mastery of tactical knowledge to aid the General Mayhem's attack, with similar aid from Gadget and the R2s. The key here is the battery rules. D&D has long had a history of attack options like Power Attack, which lets you take a penalty to hit in exchange for extra damage. In other words, it's a trade between accuracy and damage. But with batteries extra accuracy becomes extra damage with no downsides or risk of failure whatsoever, and Combined Fire increases that damage by 50%. Every 2 points of accuracy is an extra 5.5 points of damage, multiplied by 15 through the critical hit. The Coordinate talent adds 1 to the Aid Another bonus per instance of the talent, WD-40 took it 5 times and turns the +2 bonus of Aid Another into a +7. And we just used it 3 times. Each of our buddies also has the Coordinated Barrage feat to let aided allies add even more dice of damage on a successful attack (three extra dice, in this case). Furthermore, the boost to aid another means that Captain Zoom's astromech copilot's bonus went up, which means that the penalty to attacks from the maneuver went down and General Mayhem is even more accurate. And WD-40 can still feed General Mayhem information to boost the attack. Starting damage: (11 base + 3 maneuver + 3 Coordinated Barrage)d10=(17d10+9) Attack roll: 20 + 13 BAB + 5 Int (targeting computer) + 1 Point Blank Shot + 2 Morale +2 Insight +21 Aid +1 Weapon Focus +1 equipment +1 Circumstance -1 Maneuver +2 Feed Information= 68, 40 over the target and thus 20 extra dice of damage End result? (37d10+9)x15 damage, or a little under 3200 average damage in one shot, ignoring shields. Exit Executor, stage down. In Starships of the Galaxy Colossal ships such as light freighter occupy a unique mechanical space in that they're the only ship both capable of mounting capital ship weapons for maximum firepower while also using Combat Thrusters to qualify as fighters for the purpose of defenses and maneuvers, making them the beautiful intersection in the Venn Diagram of offense, defense and utility. You might think think that it's ridiculous that something could be that powerful, and you'd be exactly right. Errata for the book quickly changed the footnote on the weapon table from "Colossal or larger starships only" to "Colossal (frigate) or larger starships only", which also matches the note in Core Rulebook for the range table on vehicle weapons. The Minmaximum Falcon's existence isn't a design error, but a typographical one. But that's ok, we can do better. Behold, the most dangerous ship in the galaxy:  The Action VI Transport, the space equivalent of a box van (well, a really big box van in the Colossal (frigate) category). It's a stock bulk freighter, absurdly common and comes with 3 free emplacement points as a gift to you from the CEC. Which isn't really that much, but it's a start. Back when we were creating the Minmaximum Falcon we could score 1 EP per cost modifier in tons of cargo, converting our 150 tons of space into 30 extra EP for a total of 40 EP to create our cool ship. Unfortunately for us, a Colossal (frigate) ship has a cost modifier of 50, ten times that of a light frighter. Fortunately for us, the Action VI Transport's cargo capacity was grandfathered in from the West End Games d6 Star Wars RPG: 90,000 tons. Which means that if we went absolutely bananas and dumped our cargo hold we'd have 1800 emplacement points. THE GUN costs a mere 13 EP (and almost half a million credits, but who's counting?). What do you do with that much space? Well, most systems don't actually scale all that much- after you put in a good hyperdrive or Holonet transceiver it's not as though you need to put in another one unless you want to have a back-up available (admittedly not a bad idea in the case of hyperdrives, and frequently found in many ships). If you want to use up EP after the first dozen or two you spend on system enhancements you'll need to take enhancements that can be stacked in bulk. The obvious one would be guns. THE GUN itself takes up 13 EP, and one can be supported by up to five others as part of a battery. Each of those five aiding weapons can benefit from the Coordinate talent, turning what would be a +10 bonus to hit from 5 assists to hit to a terrifying +35. Batteries can aid other batteries, providing a +2 bonus per each of the six guns in the battery, which presumably can benefit from Coordinate as well (up to +42 per battery, in theory). While a battery for THE GUN will set you back 78 EP and 2.4 million, there's nothing that says that your aiding batteries have to be the same thing, so you could stock up on light blaster batteries for 6 EP and 7200 apiece (which is about as much as it takes to buy a box of blaster rifles for your crew). Downside to this is that if you want to use WD-40's coordination abilities on all of them you're going to have to stick to the living. Droids in Saga Edition don't think the same way as living creatures do, and while that means they can't be mind-tricked or driven into a panic by a Jedi it also means that they don't normally benefit from the morale-boosting effects of the Noble class, including the Coordinate talent. There are abilities like the "Leader of Droids" feat that can bypass this immunity, but it would take a serious investment to affect more than a half-dozen or so droids. So fill your halls with meatbags. Investing in the needs of meatbags is the other major way to burn up your points. 1 EP gives enough chairs and benches for your cost modifier in people to ride aboard your ship, while 10 EP will upgrade them to actual cabins, and 1 EP will buy you 1/5 of the modifier in medical beds and 1/50 of the modifier in bacta tanks for healing. If you do the math and cancel the modifiers then when you trade cargo for passengers the ratio is 1 ton of cargo for a chair or 10 tons for a bunk (fair enough since you're comparing mass and volume without talking density). You can stack this as many times as you want- sinking your entire cargo into seating means you could hold a football stadium worth of people, or rival the MGM Grand when it comes to rooms. Said rooms will be lovely steerage quality, but you can spend 1 EP and a varying amount of cash to upgrade the accommodations to something like "comfortable home" or "floating pleasure palace". Aside from providing the opportunity to roll around in opulence, upgrading to the best possible rooms (and paying the 10% monthly maintenance fee to keep it stocked with silk sheets and champagne) boosts the quality of your crew because life is just that awesome- a boost comparable to serving under a legendary naval officer like Admiral Levi. The two bonuses stack, so if you've got an admiral rolling around in a flying luxury resort then even your average navy recruit can duel with the aces. Of course if you don't actually give a poo poo about crew quality you can always spend 2 to 4 EP to turn that passenger space into prisons- even really luxurious prisons if mixed messages are your preferred form of rehabilitation. Or spend 2 EP per instance to install cyrogenic chambers for that old-fashion method of preservation and travel for 1/5 your modifier in critters. Upsides include emergency medical preservation and lower instances of jailbreak, downsides include the occasional ancient evil awakening from its slumber in the middle of a long-derelict hulk. But maybe you want to indulge in the cheapest method of absolutely devouring your EP: hanger space. 8 EP will get you 1/50 of your cost modifier in starship slots, where huge take 1, gargantuan take 5 and colossal takes 20. Quintuple the EP cost and you can even hide the hanger from enemy eyes (and make it far more complicated to launch from. You don't even need to go all-out on this to have fun: just buy an old Action VI bulk freighter, dump 200 EP worth of storage space and give every member of your party of bounty hunters an X-wing while enjoying your remaining 80,000 tons of cargo capacity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3fN3OPk3A do it do it do it do it It's not even unprecedented either:  This is the Wild Karrde, heavily-modified flagship of the pun-loving smuggler Talon Karrde and preexisting excuse for this entire write-up But if you do want to go all-out on this and sink your cargo space into weaponry for your bulk freighter, just how badass can you be?  This is the Eclipse, because it's not the Star Wars Expanded Universe if you don't have something bigger and badder than the films. This one's claim to fame is being the Emperor's flagship (well, at least the clone of the Emperor and...) and also packing this little number:  See, there's nothing the EU loves more than giving the Empire doomsday devices and the Eclipse is no different, packing a superlaser that's "merely" two-thirds the power of one of the eight tributary beams that converged into the first Death Star's superlaser, which is still enough to crack the crust of a planet and render it inhabitable or utterly obliterate a capital ship in one shot. Starships of the Galaxy gives the stats for this ship:  8d10x50 is about 2200 average damage, which, if you haven't noticed, is less damage than one of THE GUN's critical hits. Of course, THE GUN doesn't nearly as much damage on a regular hit, but that's just as well since there's one other piece of errata I learned about while writing this: “When using a vehicle weapon, you cannot apply any effect that causes an automatic natural 20 or automatic critical hit (such as spending a Destiny Point or using the Jedi Master’s serenity class feature), unless a rule specifies that it can be used with vehicle weapons.” Downside: General Mayhem can't use the Jedi Master's ability to order natural 20s. Upside: General Mayhem can still be a regular (elite) soldier and sink more resources into skills with THE GUN, including the ability to score critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20. If you can't guarantee quality, guarantee volume and quality of that volume. A mere 72,000 credits and 60 EP will buy you 10 light blaster batteries for a nice additional +420 to hit, +210d10 damage once WD-40 gets through with them. Even a natural 2 (the lowest possible roll without an automatic miss) means we're doing somewhere in the vicinity of 250d10x5 damage- 6875 average damage. That's triple the damage of the superlaser and enough to pop the Eclipse in one hit even with its shields up. And when 10% of the time this attack is a triple critical hit, well... The ability to desolate a planet is insignificant next to the power of five dipshits in a flying lunchbox.  Who needs a fleet?
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Feb 5, 2015 06:44
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In the Game of Love, Play to Win In spring, a young adventurer's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. And in the Of course there are! In Pathfinder, there are rules for growing and developing your relationships with the NPCs of your (GM's) choice! We can take the complex, subtle and nuanced interaction of human hearts and apply the time-honored technique of making numbers go up. The relationship rules were originally invented for the Jade Regent adventure path and were originally printed in the player's guide for it along with some information on the key NPCs who were further fleshed out in the adventure path modules themselves. Taking more than a little inspiration from recent Bioware RPGs such as Dragon Age II, the rules let you build a relationship with the NPCs as you level and at a high enough relationship (31+) you can gain a Devotion boon whose mechanical benefit represents you looking out for one another or learning something from your friendship. With a higher score you could even opt to turn it into a romantic relationship. Without further ado about nothing, let's meet our lucky bachelor(ettes)!  Sandru Vhiski, a former adventurer who used his earnings to become the owner of a trade caravan  Koya Mvashti, a long-lived fortune-teller who raised Sandru after he lost his family, who still harbors a desire to travel and see the world.  Shalelu Andosana, an elven ranger and wilderness expert who originally appeared in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path  Ameiko Kaijitsu, another Rise of the Runelords alum, a former adventurer who now owns a tavern. Also the last living heir of an ancient Minkai Imperial Dynasty in the far east, whose quest to reclaim that throne serves as the driving force of the adventure path. Based on a former PC of Paizo Creative Director James Jacobs. If your players should notice that one of these options is considerably more powerful and important than the others then they're going to have to fight for it- the player's guide says that an NPC can only be in a romance with one PC at a time unless the DM says otherwise. Of course, it says nothing about the converse and you know what that means...  This looks like a job for THE SHELYNATOR Shelyn: Pathfinder goddess of art, beauty, love and music.  Bards, bringers of art, beauty and charm. Azata, a type of outsider who love freedom, emotion and many other things including art and beauty. Aasimar: descendents of good outsiders, while the Musetouched are the music and beauty loving descendents of the Azata. We are an azata-blooded aasimar bard who worships Shelyn. Not just any bard, but a geisha bard, because an orientalist adventure deserves an orientalist archetype . We're also a savant when it comes to performance. Our starting feat is Skill Focus: Perform because we are most art. Our starting relationship score is based on our charisma modifier, which as a bard from a race with a charisma bonus should be somewhere between a +3 and +5. We might also have a +4 bonus to that relationship if one of our traits links our background to one of the NPCs (some of these traits work better for romancing NPCs than others). Not much happens at first level because not much can happen at first level- you can only make checks to change your relationship every time you gain a level. So we go strolling, plot happens and we're now level 2. At this point we can now court in earnest! There are a couple of different ways to boost the relationship as you level. The most basic is to add a point to one of the scores each time you level up, but since we're playing multiball mode this isn't that helpful. The other way to boost friendships is through bribery: every time you level you can present NPCs with a single gift whose value isn't as important as the sentiment behind it, so we can find or make something nice and affordable to hand out to all of our buddies just to show them how much we care. The limiter on this is that not only do you get one shot per level per NPC, but you also have to succeed in a Diplomacy check whose difficulty is equal to your current relationship score. Since our current relationship scores are equal to our Charisma modifier at the start, and the Diplomacy check is 1d20 + our Diplomacy skill + our Charisma modifier, there's no way to fail this at level 2, or even at higher levels because we'd be increasing our Diplomacy skill and relationship score at roughly the same pace of once per level. But why settle for acceptable when you can turn up the heat? Succeeding on the Diplomacy check by 10 or more means that the relationship goes up by +2 instead of +1. You could pray to the dice gods to favor you, but if you're coming at the Empress you'd rather not miss. So let's get diplomatic. At level 1 bards normally pick up Bardic Knowledge, which lets them add half their level (minimum 1) to Knowledge checks and make those checks untrained to ensure that a bard will probably know a little bit about anything and everything even if you invest nothing in learning about it. Nice, but the Geisha has Geisha Knowledge, which only adds that 1/2 level bonus to Knowledge (nobility) checks and adds the rest to Craft (calligraphy) checks ( ), Diplomacy checks, and one type of Perform check chosen from act, dance, oratory, percussion, string instruments, or sing. The Diplomacy bonus is a good start but we can do one better because of the one little thing that bards get at 2nd level: Versatile Performance. Versatile Performance is a class feature that lets you substitute your skill in Perform for two other skill checks, so your skill with acting can help you disguise yourself or fast talk your way through trouble. In the Shelynator's case, one of the skills boosted by Geisha Knowledge can be Perform (Oratory), which we can also substitute for Diplomacy checks, allowing us to compare a lot of people to a summer's day! With our skill focus, racial bonus (azata-blooded are good at performances), trait bonus and class skill bonus, at level 2 we're looking at 1d20+charisma + 12 against a DC equal to our charisma modifier. We can't fail. Even if we also selected our other trait to boost one of the starting relationship scores by 4, we'd only fail on a natural 1, and if we can get a +2 bonus to our perform check from a masterwork instrument (which would be... a megaphone?) we can still make it, and even if we can't do that, we've got one other thing... spells. Tap Inner Beauty is a 1st level spell that gives us a +2 insight bonus to Charisma-based checks and also happens to be one of the signature spells of Shelyn's followers. Just light that puppy up before you hand in your gift and you're golden.At 3rd level the Shelynator qualifies for the Deific Obedience feat to prove how much you love Shelyn. Deific Obedience lets you perform a daily ritual to show your devotion to your deity, getting minor bonuses that become much more potent at higher levels (12 and up). In Shelyn's case, it's as follows: Inner Sea Gods posted:Obedience: Paint a small picture, compose a short poem or song, dance a scene from a ballet, or create another work of art, whispering praise to Shelyn’s beauty and grace as you do so. The art piece need be neither large nor complex, but heartfelt and made to the best of your ability. Gift the piece of art to a stranger and pay her a sincere compliment as you do so. If there are no suitable individuals around to receive the gift, leave it in an obvious place with a note praising Shelyn and asking whoever finds it to take it with your warmest wishes. Gain a +4 sacred bonus on Craft and Perform checks. I'm not entirely sure how you leave an interpretive dance behind for strangers to find each day, especially when book 3 of the adventure path involves you spending a better part of a year heading to Fantasy Asia by trekking across the Arctic Circle, but we are going to litter the tundra with sonnets in exchange for an even bigger bonus to our Perform checks. At level 4 we gain access to 2nd level spells, including heroism, which is an all-purpose spell that boosts your murder abilities in addition to your skill checks, plus Seducer's Eyes to better charm those who find us attractive (such as our romantic interests), and even Bestow Insight to replace our Tap Inner Beauty spell with an even bigger bonus as we level. Bestow Insight is supposed to be for humans, but aasimar with the Scion of Humanity trait also count as humans for things like feats and spells (which is both good and bad for characters, but that's a different story). By level 6 or 7 you qualify for magic items such as bracers of the glib entertainer or the Blade of Three Fancies if you're not interested in Divine Obedience. Furthermore, as a bard you're probably first in line for items such as the Headband of Alluring Charisma to boost your various skills and abilities, and the relationship rules explicitly state that long term charisma boosts such as those from your magic headband will boost your Relationship score- so don't feel too bad about dropping 36k on a magic hat to save (or secure) your marriage! Similarly, you'll probably be boosting your Charisma score with ability points every 4 levels, and the Adventure Path ends at level 16. Fifteen level-ups at +2 apiece will add +30 to your relationship score by the end of the module, more than enough to boost you to the "Devotion" tier of relationships and pick up a nice little mechanical trait for your time. This means that with a starting charisma score modifier of between 3 and 5, plus another 4 to 5 points of Charisma boosters from leveling and magic hats the Shelynator will have a minimum relationship score of 37, or 38 if you can get someone to craft you a +6 charisma headband instead of +4 one. Is it good enough for love though? Let's take a look at the romance thresholds: Koya Mvashti: 32 Shalelu Andosana: 35 Sandru Vhiski: 38 Ameiko Kaijitsu: 40 With a +6 headband you can grab any of the first three, and if you also have Childhood Crush (Ameiko) then the +4 relationship bonus will push you past the threshold for her as well. This is before you add in the dozen or more bonus points per NPC you can pick up in the adventure just by doing things the character in question likes ranging from helping others, to seeing cool locations to making friends or money or just murdering a bunch of goblins, or the 15 free floating relationship points you can use from your 15 level-ups which you can use to patch up any rough spots or start the romancing a few levels early (don't invest in any one too quickly or you'll outrun your Perform check and only be getting 1 point per gift per NPC per level). Now it's one thing to have a relationship score worthy of a romance, but it's quite another to actually start it. In order to set a course for smoochville in Jade Regent you first need to succeed in a Sense Motive check with a difficulty equal to the relationship score to find out if the object of your affection is thinking what you're thinking. This is a bit of a problem because Sense Motive is a completely different skill that uses Wisdom instead of your Charisma skill, and a DC of 30+ isn't exactly small potatoes, requiring a fair amount of bonuses from leveling, ability scores and miscellaneous bonuses in addition to just plain rolling well. It's not all bad because some of our spells such as heroism boost skill checks in general. It's also not all bad because we're still the Shelynator. Versatile Performance lets you substitute your Perform skill for two different skills and we chose Perform (oratory) because one of those skills we can tag in for is Diplomacy... and the other is Sense Motive, thus letting us use our ridiculous bonus to steamroll our way through any opposition. Once that stage is clear all that's left is a Diplomacy check against a difficulty of 10 + the NPC's level + the NPC's Charisma modifier, and even at the end of the game it's still going to be less than their relationship thresholds. Shelynation complete, romance engaged. The only thing that will stop you at this point is if your relationship score somehow backslides below the romance threshold. That's pretty easy to avoid though, just don't be a dick because that's how things get weird. Jade Regent doesn't just borrow the relationship meter from Dragon Age II but it also borrows the choice of paths. You can have a friendly relationship built on trust and support, or a competitive relationship built on rivalry and opposition. The type of relationship is chosen once you develop it, though it's not easy to switch paths once it's in motion. You can still boost your competitive relationship with points as you level, but while the chief source of relationship boosting for friendships is gifting, the chief source of relationship boosting for competitive relationships is insults. Instead of making a diplomacy check when you turn in your gift, you can make an Intimidate check as part of a particular insult once per level per NPC, boosting your competitive relationship by 1 or by 2 if you beat the usual DC by 10 or more. Reaching a score of 31 or higher will give you an Enmity boon where you've managed to piss each other off so hard that you learned something from it (even if it's only from watching out for retaliation). While gifts aren't supposed to cost much, insults are even cheaper and come in an abundance of forms. Just one little trick will help you reach enmity with any of the campaign NPCs- be an absolute bigot. Mock, belittle and otherwise insult their sex, race, religion, body or ability and you are guaranteed to get a response. Nobody likes a bigot. Versatile Performance means the Shelynator can burn as easily as charm thanks to the power of Versatile Performance. The percussion option to let you use your Perform in place of Handle Animal or Intimidate for your personal insult purposes (presumably using really racist triangle solos). Pounding your way up into the 30s is as easy as pie. Your usual charisma bonuses apply, but an interesting question is raised when you run across some of the various events in the books. Giving a gift will raise a friendly relationship or lower a competitive one, while an insult will do the opposite, but what happens when you trigger any of the events in the book that raise your relationship when it's a competitive one? Since the rules for relationship bonuses offered by traits, charisma and leveling don't care if you're in a friendly or competitive relationship then it's probably arguable that other events will raise your competitive relationship as well even if it's out of a grudging respect for a person you don't personally like. The alternative is that those things become a huge waste of time and effort by undoing any progress you've made with a competitive relationship, which isn't very fun (even though your racist dick of a character probably deserves it). Should you decide to switch gears in a relationship it gets a bit more complicated. Switching from friendly to competitive is simple: just be a total dick. Your relationship will be switched and its score will be promptly halved with no roll required as the pain of your rejection burns some bridges behind you. Making nice is harder, since it requires a Diplomacy check 10 higher than the relationship score of your current competitive relationship. So if the Shelynator has spent the entire campaign antagonizing a single NPC for +2 competitive per level (+30), boosting the relationship each level with the free point (+15), hit up all the story events that boost that relationship (+15) and has a fantastic Charisma modifier (+12) and relationship trait (+4), you could be looking a relationship score of 76 or higher if you allow for more relationship building from plot events (Ameiko in particular gets kidnapped more often than Princess Peach- rescuing her should probably count for something), another level or two (+2 insult and +1 free point per level) and even more ridiculous charisma scores from some combination of wishes/aging/succubi/vampirism/mythic, you could even crack the 80s. How could you possibly hope to hit a DC of 90 using a completely different skill from what you used to intimidate? Well, the good news is that it's not a completely different skill- as a worshipper of Shelyn and a bard the Shelynator qualifies for Persuasive Performer, which lets you use any Perform skill in place of Diplomacy, thus increasing your versatility even further by allowing you to use your racist triangle skills to play a song of reconciliation and healing. With just the spells and items we've already acquired we're in the mid-70s for the skill check, and we can boost it further with even more feats or just by spamming bestow insight on a half dozen people and ordering them to play back-up on the tambourine (and our Deific Obedience feat also can boost our Versatile Performance skill even higher at high levels). If we can probably hit 1d20+100 with this thing. So after a long campaign of insults and rivalry we devote all of our strength and skill to creating the best triangle medley of reconciliation that the world has ever seen! Regardless of the roll, your song touches the heart of your rival and blasts away all enmity with its healing dingle! The power of friendship fills your hearts, halving your Relationship score in the process, but since it was in the 70s to maybe even 80 that means it's somewhere in the oddly convenient range of 35 to 40. Do you believe that love can bloom in the dungeon? Roll a Sense Motive Check and a Diplomacy check to find out! Some of you might point out that this requires a ridiculous expenditure of resources that make it incredibly impractical for anything other than a hyper-focused character, and it's not possible to go multiball on this one since it requires the use of your free floating points from your level-up. You'd be right; this is a ridiculous waste of resources because none of this is actually needed. There's one more little rule in the romance section Jade Regent Player's Guide posted:Note that a PC can have a romance with an NPC with whom she has a competitive relationship—opposites do sometimes attract, after all—but this kind of romance can be more difficult to begin. If the PC’s Diplomacy check to start a romance is successful, the romance begins, and the nature of the PC’s relationship with that NPC immediately changes from competitive to friendly. This change does not necessitate reducing the Relationship Score by half in this case You can be a toxic rear end in a top hat whose relationships are defined by a steady stream of abuse and bigotry, but all of that is in the past with the power of makeouts. You can build your relationship score through intimidation, and since it uses the same Sense Motive and Diplomacy tools that the friendship track uses, all that means is that there's just one more skill you have to be good with. Of course, the Diplomacy DC is still based on 10 + level + Charisma modifier, but Ameiko is the one with the highest Charisma at 18 (with Shaelu at a whopping 8) and the NPCs tend to be lower level than you are towards the end of the game. Ameiko might still boost her Charisma score by a few points as she levels, but even she is unlikely to have a Diplomacy higher than the low 30s. Even a standard investment in Diplomacy is enough to have a good shot at hitting those numbers (especially with spell support), which means that the skills required for a bad romance are primarily Intimidate with a single good Sense Motive check and a decent Diplomacy check later on. The Shelynator can do this, but since there are no Versatile Performance skills that boost both Intimidate and Sense Motive you're going to need to invest in more than one performance (which isn't too bad, you get a Versatile Performance at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th and 18th level, and about half of your abilities support Performance checks in general). But if you're going to invest in Intimidate and Sense motive then there's one other class you can consider.  The Inquisitor. At 1st level, the Inquisitor gains the Stern Gaze feature, which adds half of your level to your Intimidate and Sense Motive skills, while being a half-orc inquisitor means you can choose a character option that also adds half your level to Intimidate checks, effectively granting you an extra point of intimidate every level (well, two points per two levels) and thus letting you keep pace with rising relationship scores. It gets even easier since the Conversion Inquisition option lets you use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate checks, which means you only need one ability score for talking purposes since Wisdom also governs your Sense Motive skill and a host of features including spellcasting and Will saves, in addition to boosting Perception (the most used skill in the game). Of course, if you're using Wisdom as your primary ability score, your Charisma score is going to suffer for it and thus you aren't going to get those free extra 5 to 10 points of relationship score that the Shelynator gets. But low starting relationship means it's incredibly easy to meet the DCs as you level, especially since intimidate is one of the easiest skills to boost- you get a +4 to intimidate checks if you're larger than your target and ensuring that your insults hurt your rival's feelings more because your rival must now nurse a height complex. While you can pretty effortlessly get the +30 Insult boosts from 15 levels, pushing yourself over the romance threshold is going to require you to lean on the plot boosters or maybe even spend some of your precious free relationship points. You're going to be getting your groove on several levels behind the Shelynator, but at least you're getting it and building yourself a harem through the power of verbal abuse and hatefucking. As long as we're branching out into new bold new worlds for ability scores, there's a few methods to use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for Diplomacy, such as the Student of Philosophy trait or the Diabolical Negotiator feat provided you worship Asmodeus. On the downside you're going to be even further behind than an Inquisitor since not only are you lacking in the Shelynator's star power but also the Inquisitor's 1/2 level boosts and thus have to scrounge for all your bonuses the old fashion way through feats, items and spells. On the up side you can logic your way into somebody's pants.  The new investigator has a little bit of an easier time with this since there's the empiricist archetype with the ability to use your Intelligence instead of Wisdom for Sense Motive as well to help you pave the way to romance, plus you have the ability to roll an extra die and add it to some of your checks- not the greatest bonus, but at least it's something. You even share the focused scrutiny spell with the bard and inquisitor, allowing you to focus on a single target for a +5 to Diplomacy and Intimidate and +10 to Sense Motive checks. Even the wizard can have some options if you're using Intelligence for Diplomacy, since it can be boosted further by being an enchanter and having a thrush or adorable pig as your familar (and since the Thrush shares your skill points and can talk it can even aid your Diplomacy checks to hit on NPCs and thus redefine "wingman"). With a helping of effort you might even be able to consistently land the +2 gifts and get a sweetheart or three who loves you for your logical brain.  Should the desires of the Shelynator and friends not be slaked even by the initial buffet of NPCs, Paizo served up a second course with two more NPCs:  Kelda Oxgutter, a northern barbarian woman you rescue in the first module. You can take her back to her people, but maybe she'll decide to hang around and guard your caravan.  Ulf Gormundr, another northerner you free from prison because you need his ranger skills to help your party make the trek across the Arctic Circle without all of you horribly dying of frostbite and dysentery. If you're looking for love, Kelda has a manageable 36 threshold, but Ulf requires a formidable 42, making him harder to love than Ameiko. It's not impossible if you're heavily invested, but you're going to start running into one of the biggest brick walls in the relationship system: time. Out of the four key components to boosting your relationship score, both your freebie points and your gift/insult opportunities are tied to you gaining a level, which means you have only a certain number of opportunities to use them- up to 15 in Jade Regent since it ends with you hitting level 16. Kelda comes in when you're level 3 or maybe even level 2 if you manage to rescue her first, so you're only a little behind on opportunities compared to the original four NPCs, but Ulf isn't picked up until the very end of the second module just as you hit level 7 or maybe even after that. Assuming you got him out early and immediately start buttering him up you've got to even farther than Ameiko with only 3/5ths the amount of time to do it (9 level-ups). Even the Shelynator is going to feel the burn- dumping nine levels of +2 gifts and freebie points will only get you to 27, requiring you to make up the rest of it somehow (unlike Ameiko, it's highly unlikely that you'll have a campaign trait that gives you a free +4 to your relationship score). Should you fall head over heels for an NPC in the 3rd (lvl 7), 4th (lvl 10) or 5th (lvl 12) module, you'll have even less time to get into the 30s and your relationship progress will rest almost entirely on a combination of having ridiculous Charisma and an absolute truckload of plot events, making it all but impossible for your average character. On the flip-side, spending more than a dozen levels in contact with the Shelynator will likely leave you enthralled by devotion and/or love (which will likely prompt you to spend even more levels in contact). You will be Shelynated, resistance is futile. But let's set aside talks of the Shelynator and multiballs and try to use it as the designers intended. You're a humble villager who has been nursing a crush on Ameiko since you were young and thus readily volunteer to serve as her noble protector as she fulfills her destiny! Think it's possible that a princess and a fighter like you... well, it worked for The Bodyguard, right?  AND IIII-EA-IIII WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOOOOUUUUUUU You've got the Childhood Crush trait that connects you to Ameiko, so that's a decent start. Unfortunately, you've got no real Charisma modifier to speak of because you're a fighter, not a paladin or swashbuckler who would actually use Charisma, and your Charisma modifier is unlikely to get much better as you level. You can throw in your freebie points as you level, but even if you hit level 20 it still wouldn't be enough for her to notice you. You're going to have to use plot events! But even if you hit every single Ameiko-related plot event in the adventure path, that's only +15, putting you to 34+your low (or even negative) charisma modifier. You're going to also need to use some gifts. Unfortunately, you run into the next problem, namely that Diplomacy is not a class skill for you. This isn't the absolute end of the world here, because all a class skill does is give you a +3 to checks using it. Then again, that's something you could kind of use given your relative lack of Charisma. But hey, we can swap Childhood Crush trait for the Best Friend trait, granting us a +2 trait bonus to Diplomacy while making it a class skill and keeping our +4 to Relationship with Ameiko. By nursing a secret crush on our best friend all of our problems are solved! Except for the part where you're a fighter and thus only get 2 + Int skill points per level, forcing you to choose between spending them on skills that prevent you from dying in battle and skills that prevent you from dying alone. But hey, love is worth any cost! Your Diplomacy skill growth could keep up with rising relationship score were you not adding points from our level or getting plot events, but a combination of those two means that you're going to eventually outstrip ourselves after ten levels or so. Still, that should be enough when combined with the free points and massive pile of plot events. You're ready for love! Right after you succeed at a DC 40 Sense Motive check to figure out if Ameiko is interested: a skill you can't afford using an ability score you don't prioritize against a DC that would be consider for someone who actually specialized in it. You only get one chance to succeed at this check per level and as we've already discussed you don't exactly have a whole lot of levels to make this shot. But hey, you could be a Tactician fighter, which grants you more skill points and makes several skills class skills including Diplomacy and Sense Motive, but you run into the problem of a large portion of your archetype's features ranging crap to actively insulting the player and there's still no guarantee that you'll be able to scrounge up enough Sense Motive bonuses to be able to reliably land a DC 40+ check (since every time you increase your relationship with Ameiko beyond 40 it just makes it harder to tell if she'll love you). You can have better luck with Intimidate since it's already a class skill, but without Sense Motive you're still going to be stuck as a rival. Piles of plot events can compensate for low charisma and Diplomacy skills in order get you into the highest relationship brackets, but even they can't get you past the gates of love. Even if you go out of your way to build your fighter as a more talky character, your quest for romance is still liable to leave you as "just friends". Some classes just aren't made to be loved. At this point you might be thinking "so the Relationship system is a series of repetitive number grinds that heavily rewards those who optimize around it and punishes relationships involving characters who either don't invest or involve themselves in characters who show up too late. If the only equalizer in the system is having interesting story events and meaningful character interaction, why have a numerical relationship system at all?" Well,
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Feb 28, 2015 05:44
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Golden Bee posted:What do you actually get for romancing these people? Very little. Reaching a relationship score of 31 or higher unlocks the Devotion tier (for friendly relationships) or the Enmity tier (for competitive relationships) and grants you a different boon depending on your relationship with the NPC. For simplicity, I'm going to use D for Devotion Boon, E for Emnity Boon and RS for Relationship score. Ameiko Kaijitsu: D: Once per session gain the benefits of her inspire courage or inspire competence performance as a swift action, lasting for RS/10 in rounds E: +4 to saves vs. sonic and mind-affecting attacks. Koya Mvashti: D: Each session, get RS x 10 gp in free potions of your choice from Koya, and save 10% on the cost of creating potions yourself E: +4 to saves against illusion and Sense Motive checks vs. Bluff Sandru Vhiski: D: +1 dodge to AC whenever you move at least 10 feet in combat E: +4 to Initiative Shalelu Andosana: D: +1 morale bonus to saves in wilderness areas, +3 morale bonus to saves while in the forest E: +2 to attack rolls and weapon damage rolls against a creature type chosen from the ranger's favored enemy list Kelda Oxgutter: D: Gain a +5 enhancement bonus to move speed once per session as a swift action, lasting RS/10 rounds E: +4 to saves vs. fear and enhancement Ulf Gormundr: D: +1 to attack rolls and weapon damage rolls for a round against any enemy who successfully attacks one of your allies E: +2 to Initiative, Perception, Stealth and Survival checks on a terrain type chosen from the ranger's favored terrain list None of these are keyed to romance, just normal relationship scores. For some people such as Sandru, the Enmity boon is far better than the Devotion boon (though honestly you're not supposed to know the boon beforehand), so from a pure mechanical standpoint you might want to be able to mix and match. If you don't care about romancing then a bard is better off picking a Versatile Performance like Keyboard (Diplomacy and Intimidate) to let you tailor your performance as needed, or picking up the Persuasive Performer feat to slap Diplomacy onto a Versatile Performance skill that already covers Intimidate such as the aforementioned Percussion, or possibly Versatile Performer (comedy), which covers Bluff and Intimidate. Starting an actual romance through the Sense Motive/Diplomacy route offers no additional mechanical benefit unless you have the Childhood Crush trait. Childhood Crush normally gives you a +1 trait bonus to attacks against people that threaten your crush, but more importantly lets you make a DC 15 Charisma check once per day to get your crush to be nice to you, with a success granting a +1 trait bonus to all saves for the remainder of the day. In a game where a +1 trait bonus to a single save is already a pretty great bonus, +1 to all three is just fantastic for a trait. If you're involve in a romance with your crush you instead get that +1 trait all the time, which makes it one of the greatest traits in the game from a mechanical standpoint. Since the trait is only keyed to a single NPC (Ameiko, Sandru or Shalelu... sorry Koya fan) there's no real mechanical reason to go after more than one romance. Past that it's just a bunch nerds sitting around a table with the end game of trying to mechanically solve the question of how to get their stand-ins laid (which also sums up most Bioware romances). Going full Shelynator is just a way to embrace that role and snap up those romances before anyone else gets them, ensuring that the party fighter dies alone and unloved as nature intended.
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Feb 28, 2015 20:49
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Pathfinder Creative Director James Jacobs also wrote a big chunk of the Jade Regent Player's Guide, including at least some of the mechanics. There were actually two new mechanical rulesets in the Jade Regent Player's Guide (or JRPG for short). Relationship rules were one of them, and those rules eventually made it into the Ultimate Campaign book along with alternate rules from other APs (such as the Kingdom-building rules from Kingmaker). The other set of rules is the ones for caravans. In Jade Regent the caravan is the backbone of your heroic journey of thousands of miles from Aemiko's home in Varisia to her family's ancestral home in Minkai, especially since she's towing an ancient family legacy McGuffin that that can't be teleported. The idea is thus a simple one where the players can influence and shape the caravan's ability by directing its growth and investing in its capabilities until it's the finest caravan on the continent. Each caravan has four core statistics, which start at 1 and can be up to 10: Offense: Your basic fighting power Defense: Your sturdiness Mobility: Your ability to maneuver around obstacles and dangers Morale: The general spirits of your caravan crew as a whole Which are then combined with your miscellaneous bonuses to create your derived statistics Attack: What you roll when the caravan is fighting things, 1d20 + your Offense + other bonuses AC: What people roll against when attacking you, 10 + Defense + other bonuses Security: Rolled for dealing with hazards, 1d20 + Mobility + other bonuses Resolve: What you roll when you've got people problems, 1d20 + Morale + other bonuses Caravans are made up of a series of wagons with different functions that make up the core of the caravan. All wagons have several basic stats: HP: The toughness of your caravan, derived from a sum of the HP of every wagon in the caravan. Lose all of them and you're stuck until you fix it Travelers: How much space you have for yourselves, your NPC friends, your minions and any passengers you feel like picking up. Some wagons have more room for passengers than others, and most passengers can help make your caravan's abilities better Cargo Capacity: Your space for supplies, loot and upgrades. Some wagons have more room for supplies than others Consumption: How much food supplies you go through each day, feeding your crew and the horses that pull your caravan Your caravan also has a level equal to that of the highest level PC in the party. Every time the caravan levels it gets a feat which you can spend to improve its capabilities ranging from traveling speed to capacity to consumption to abilities scores. With further simple rules for things like repairs, trading and hirelings, the idea is that you'd take your wagon train on an epic journey of thousands of miles, braving hazards, fending off foes, making friends and maybe some money along the way. Oregon Trail but with elves. Only one little problem... the caravan rules don't really do what they're supposed to do. Your caravan starts with a single point in all four of the basic statistics (offense/defense/morale/mobility). You then have three random floating points to assign after that. The only way to boost your statistics after that is with the Enhanced Caravan feat, which boosts two stats by +1 each to a maximum of 10, but the feat can be taken as many times as you wish provided your caravan is level 2 or higher. This is a bit of a problem because 11 out of the 16 caravan feats require a 3 or higher in a particular statistic before you can use them. You do get circumstance bonuses from having people working in your caravan. Guards provide a +1 bonus to your offense score, Guides and Scouts provide a +1 bonus to Security, and Entertainers provide a +1 to Resolve, stacking up to a +5 bonus from five workers. You also get a +1 morale bonus to Attack, Security and Resolve for each PC hanging around, to a maximum of +4. Similarly, you can buy a ballista to provide a +1 to attack, or buy up to two armored wagons for +3 to AC each, two prisoner wagons for +2 Security each, and 1 Royal Carriage for +4 Resolve. But then you start running into bottlenecks. Each wagon can only hold up to a certain number of traveler spots (between 2 and 6) and a certain number of spaces for cargo supplies (between 1 and 10), but you only get up to five wagons in your caravan and one of them is supposed to be the Fortune Teller wagon (2 passengers, 4 cargo) unless you like taking a -2 penalty to Attack, Security and Resolve checks. If you want more wagons you need to take the Extra Wagons feat for 2 extra wagons per feat instance (up to three times for six extra wagons), and that requires you to sink at least two points into your Mobility stat to get to Mobility 3. But all of this also costs money. Wagon costs range from 300 gp for the most basic supply wagons for cargo to 500 gp for a covered wagon for passengers to 2,500 for a Royal Carriage, 4,000 for a Prisoner Wagon and 5,000 apiece for an Armored Wagon. Every wagon in your train requires a driver in order to move, and that driver can't do any other job while driving. If you want to stock up on minions, you're going to have to pay them monthly wages, and guards, guides, scouts and entertainers command a premium rate at 100 gp for a scout and 50 gp for the others, compared to 10 gp for a driver or cook or someone to repair your wagon (though given that you need drivers to move the wagon and can only repair when you spend a day not moving, how much would it cost per month to get a driver who can fix wheels?). Fortunately you don't have to pay a monthly wage to any PCs or significant NPCs such as Ameiko and the other bachelor(ette)s, making them ideal for the high-end jobs. Even better is that anyone capable of casting a spell can sub in for any of the high-end jobs even if they wouldn't normally qualify (because magic can do anything  ), and the only casters in the party will be PCs or significant NPCs. There aren't a whole lot of named NPCs to recruit though; aside from Kelda in the 1st module and Ulf in the 2nd, about the only other named NPC who is reasonably likely to join you is Spivey, a tiny fairy-like outsider who you encounter in the 1st module. Spivey is probably the best of the caravan companions, because not only is she a spellcasting wild card but her size means she doesn't take up any additional space on the caravan and you don't need to track her food usage since she barely eats. She's basically a free ball of benefits. Every horse pulling a wagon and every human riding on it boosts your caravan's consumption and means you'll go through 1 unit of provisions per point of consumption per day. 10 units of provisions costs 5 gp, so every point of consumption is 1/2 a gp per day. You can have people serve as cook to reduce consumption by 2 per chef down to the minimum of the number of wagons you have, but if you're hiring cook to save supplies you're also going to be spending 10 gp a month per cook to save 1 gp per day, except the cook also needs to eat so you're only saving 1/2 a gp per day and you're still capped at 5 cooks. Past that there's the efficient consumption feat which basically functions as a free cook per feat slot, but that's almost certainly an even higher opportunity cost than just hiring a cook, especially when expert travelers boosts the bonus you can get from jobs (including cooks) by 1 per feat (though it also requires a very high 5 Morale before you qualify for it). You can otherwise gain supplies by having your scouts hunt for 2 provisions per day, but they won't provide the Security bonus for scouting. Far easier is just to have your casters like Koya magically spit out food once they hit level 5 or so since it costs nothing but spell slots that you're not otherwise using while traveling from day to day. Fixing your wagon is a bit more complicated, since it requires you to use up one unit of repair materials to restore a Security check's worth of HP to your caravan, and repair materials go for 25 gp per unit. You can use the scavengers caravan feat to find a unit or more per week if your Security check is decent, which lets you stock up, but saving 25 gp per unit may not really be all that worthwhile in the long run. Trading is done by buying trade goods for 10 gp apiece from a settlement and then dragging them somewhere else. Upon arrival at a different settlement, up to five traders can sell a unit of trade goods apiece, each rolling a Resolve check to determine how much you get from it. Since it's based on the check result, you want at least a +10 in Resolve in order to guarantee a profit, and thus one of the better options is to roll up with a royal carriage (+4 to Resolve) and have 5 people on the team switch over to entertainer (especially spellcasters) for +1 Resolve apiece. Even with nothing else invested in Morale aside from your starting number and your +4 to Resolve from team PC, you're still earning 15 to 34 gp per cargo unit, or maybe more with more investment. There are no modifiers for things like distance or exotic goods, so the best trade routes are the shortest local ones possible rather than any high-risk long-distance trading. Even if you invest in this and can reliably turn up 20 or more GP in pure profit per unit of goods, the five trader limit means that you're still only earning a 100 gp or so in profit per settlement, which means it's going to take a ridiculous amount of time before you can afford several thousand gp specialized wagons, making trading more of a novelty than a form of legitimate enterprise for a serious adventurer (which is par for the course, I guess). The dangers of the road are much less of a novelty. Your caravan has an HP count that's determined simply by a sum of the HP totals of every wagon in the caravan, from your basic wagon having 20 HP up to an armored wagon having 60 HP (and a horse train having 10 HP). Your caravan might lose HP from events and hazards, but most of the time damage comes from combat. Caravan combat represents the people aboard your caravan getting into a fight with a blob of some other enemies (bandits, goblins, wolves, zombies, etc) or an enemy big enough to threaten a caravan on its own such as a giant or dragon. The two sides make attack rolls against AC and do damage on a hit, with your caravan dealing 1d6+your level in damage on a successful hit, though you can boost that damage by 1d6 per instance of the increased damage feat (three max for a total of 4d6 + level). There's still not all that much for the actual PCs to do during a caravan fight aside from watch one player roll for the caravan and maybe cast a spell to add +1 to attack, but that's a different problem. So, what's the opposition like? Well, funny story that. See, while the rules for caravans use their own subsystem, the rules for the caravan encounters determine the the encounter's Attack, AC, HP and damage based on the average stats for a monster of that CR. But while a monster of a given CR is assumed to be a standard challenge for a party of four equal-level PCs, a caravan barely qualifies as one PC, and a PC with almost no class features and a troubling gear dependency at that. Thanks to HP being a function of the number of wagons you bolt together you can kind of muddle your way through the first module's encounters by virtue of having a large blob of HP to tank your way through enemy damage as you plink your way through their comparatively smaller amount of HP. But things don't really stay that way. Book 3 is about the journey the characters take to Tian Xia by crossing over three thousand miles of ice and passing by the north pole. It's the time when the characters' survival skills are pushed to the limit, and is the big shining moment when the caravan rules run front and center alongside the PCs.  Feel the spirit of adventure as you challenge the unknown! So, how does it stack up? Our caravan is level 7 because we're level 7 at the start of this module, which means it does 1d6+7 damage. As to the rest of our stats, that's a little harder to figure out. Because we have no real plan we just put one of each of our three starting points into Offense, Defense and Mobility to bring them to 2 each, then splashed around on feats, taking Enhanced Caravan when we needed it. So let's say our Offense is 4 and the rest of our stats are 3. We haven't really bothered upgrading the caravan all that much, so it's just the starting three wagons of Fortune Teller, Covered and Supply, so no major stat changes. We've got our four PCs, the core four NPCs, plus Ulf because his hiring was plot-mandated and we also hired some dudes to drive the caravan and cook and stuff like that. Shalelu and Ulf are scouting, Koya is fortune telling, Ameiko and our rogue are entertainers, Sandru and our fighter are guarding, our cleric is healing the guards and our wizard is using spells to guide. We've got basic supplies, some trade goods, repair gear and we even remembered to buy some cold-weather gear because we're not totally ignorant. So taking into account our +2 to +3 bonuses from jobs and the +4 team hero bonuses, we've got a caravan that looks like this: Attack: +11; damage 1d6 +7; AC: 13; HP 70; Security +10; Resolve + 9 Here comes a run-of-the-mill random encounter from the start of the of the module, a bog standard pack of starving predators (wolves, bears, whatever): AC: 20; hp 85; Attack +13; damage 6d8+3 Well... we do about 10.5 damage per hit, assuming we hit every single round it will take us about eight or nine rounds to defeat them. Our accuracy means we only hit 60% of the time, so we should be able to win in 14 rounds or so. Actually, since the animals will flee at 30 HP, we only need to fight for about 9 rounds. Unfortunately, they do 30 damage a hit on average and hit us on anything but a natural 1. We're wolf chow in 3 rounds. Ok, backing up a bit. At the start of the module there's a broken-down armored wagon that we can repair and add to our caravan (assuming didn't miss the check to find it, had a spare wagon slot, didn't already have two armored wagons and had a spare driver/pair of animals to put on it). We do that, and we get a free +3 to AC and an extra 60 HP. Come on wolves, it's time for a rematch! Well, with our extra AC they only hit us 90% of the time, and with the extra HP we're wolf chow in 5 rounds. Welp. Ok, gently caress you wolves, you mess with the bull, you're getting the horns! We switch all of our ability points into Defense, then take Enhanced Caravan every chance we get to pump our Defense even higher, putting the rest of those stat points into Offense and then we're buying two armored wagons and so many guards and ballistas (also entertainers, guides, and scouts). We are now better, faster, stronger! Attack: +19; damage 1d6+7; HP: 190; AC 26; Security +10; Resolve +10 We only miss on a natural 1, so we'll take these guys down in 5 rounds. With 10 Defense (the maximum) and 2 armored wagons at +3 AC apiece we have just about the highest defense possible! The wolves still hit us on a 13 or higher, and in the course of 5 rounds take off almost a third of our HP. That's going to take five or six repair attempts to patch up and at 25 gp per unit of repair supplies it's not exactly nothing. But hey, we can avoid this encounter by making a DC 22 Security check, so we only have about a 55% chance of having to fight these guys, 45% if we throw food at them. If we devoted ourselves to Security checks we could probably make this pretty easily by having a good Maneuverability score, getting +4 from our PCs, +5 from scouts and guides, and +4 from a pair of Prisoner wagons (+2 security each). Discretion is the better part of valor after all, no sense wasting our resources on dangerous fights! Of course, you're rolling random encounters at a 10% rate every day you spend out there, and that rate climbs by 10% every day without an encounter until you finally get one and reset the meter. Some of those encounters are nice like finding wrecked caravans with supplies for you to scavenge, but others involve needing to maneuver your caravan away from chasms or fighting off wildlife before it eats your horses and forces you to abandon your wagon. Even if you take a day or two to repair damage from the previous encounters you're still going to be rolling for more random encounters including monsters attacking your encampment. The best way to avoid rolling too many random encounters is simply to haul rear end across the pole as fast as humanly possible, but that involves spending feats (and more feats on getting the prerequisite ability scores), and/or money and wagon and cargo slots for horses and enhanced undercarriages. If you're diverting resources into trying to run into as few random encounters as possible you're probably going to be ill-equipped for the ones you do run into. The predators are probably the easiest fight in the module and it's an avoidable random encounter; here's one of the harder ones, and it's a mandated plot fight: Band of Yeti: AC 23; HP 115; Attack +17; damage 8d8+4 Additionally at the start of the fight the caravan needs to make a DC 24 Resolve check or be rendered paralyzed with fear for a round, unable to attack or move and taking a -4 penalty to AC. The yeti receive one wave of reinforcements each round for five rounds, adding 20 HP per round and prompting a DC 18 Resolve check against the fear effect. We can solve the reinforcement problem by having the PCs scout and destroy them before the caravan gets there, which is doable provided we're ok with the fact that these are neutral creatures, we're in their territory and the only reason they're attacking us to begin with is because their chieftain being mind-controlled by the boss of the module (who is personally out to get us). So let's get killing! At this point we're level 9, so we have two more feats for our caravan. We can boost our stats, but our defense is as high as it will go, so let's just boost our damage then with those two feats. Attack: +19; damage 3d6+9; HP: 190; AC 26; Security +10; Resolve +10 Assuming we've already exterminated the population of their village to deny them reinforcements it'll take about 7 rounds to beat them and it will take them about 8 rounds to bust through our HP and AC. If we fail that first Resolve check (which we only have a 35% chance of making), then we lose a round of attacks and they will likely be able to dismantle us. We could swap out our 1st level feat for Circle the Wagons to boost our AC by 4 and lower the expected damage per round by another 8 points or so, but it will drag the fight out another round and won't help us if we get paralyzed with fear. If we failed or chose not to exterminate the local population then we will be treading water in the damage race for up to five rounds because they're replenishing HP as fast as we can dish it out, assuming we don't miss or blow any one of our five 65% shots at save-or-suck. We could swap out one of our non-armored wagons for the royal carriage and its +4 to Resolve checks, but that's 2,500 gp and means less room for supplies (such as the quite frankly unrealistic amount of ballistas that go into giving us that +19 attack). Fortunately, there are two plot-related morale boosts earlier in the module, so our resolve check can actually be boosted by another 3, which is enough to survive the secondary morale checks even if the added HP means we're going to lose the damage race. This is one of the strongest offense and defense builds you can have at this point of the game incorporating an unfeasible amount of financial investment in staff and equipment and this is still a dicey fight that will likely dismantle most of our HP and leave us with some expensive repairs over the next few days assuming we have any spare parts in the remaining cargo space not occupied by food, cold weather supplies, trade goods or ballistas. And unlike with food supplies the rules aren't really clear about if you can repair the caravan using magic spells. If you didn't go all-in on being a barely-competent murder machine then things get significantly worse. Didn't fully upgrade your AC to the maximum? You lose Didn't heavily invest in attack upgrades? You lose Didn't up your damage? You lose Decided that your trade caravan should have more resources dedicated to trading? You lose Didn't realize that your heroes are also going to be fighting a separate fight during this fight and thus their caravan jobs might be empty? You lose Didn't take on a dozen or so extra hands and their ensuing several-hundred gp per month salary? You lose Tried to build your caravan around avoiding and evading fights? You lose But hey, only entitled WoW babies wander around thinking they're going to win every fight (especially the climatic ones at the end of the modules). You win some, you lose some, your caravan hits 0 HP... what's the worst that can happen? JRPG posted:All non-significant NPCs are slain if your caravan is destroyed, as are all horses used to draw the wagons (with the exception of special PC mounts or animal companions). All equipment purchased for the caravan is either destroyed or looted by the victors. If any surviving characters can serve as wainwrights, you might be able to repair your wagons enough to be serviceable, but you’ll still need to find additional animals to draw your caravan’s wagons—in such a disaster, it’s generally a better option to press on without your caravan or, more likely, retreat to the nearest settlement to buy new wagons and hire new help to try again. You lose everything. Every copper you put into equipment, hirelings and supplies is now wasted, as is every cent you've wasted on wagons if you somehow can't conjure up draft animals in the middle of Arctic tundra (even taming the local wildlife will take two weeks of rolling for encounters). When it comes to your caravan your offense is a whisper, your AC is paper and your HP count is made of money, making every random encounter a risky proposition because even taking a non-fatal amount of damage can leave you burning through supplies and random encounter opportunities. Lose a single fight and you're exactly where you'd be had you simply ignored the caravan and used the money to buy horses for everyone.  The smoke symbolizes your investments turning to ash Blatant Lies, JRPG posted:If all of this sounds kind of scary, remember that your caravan will, on average, be tougher than most of the enemies it encounters. If you take care of your caravan, keep it in good repair, and know when to retreat or avoid combat, you should be able to avoid meeting such a devastating fate as total caravan destruction. By pegging the opposition to the monster math Paizo created a system where the enemy numbers go up much faster than the players' ability to boost their own combat capabilities, even when absurdly optimized. Since combat and noncombat abilities draw from the same pool of stats, feats, equipment slots and money, investing in one means you're not investing in the other, so combat caravans are wrecked by random hazards and trade or maneuverability caravans get absolutely cratered in unavoidable fights (be they plot or random-encounter). It's a giant pile-up of design errors and bad decision, with the end result of a horrible malfunctioning mess that was complained about up and down the forums and the most commonly suggested fix being "don't use the caravan rules." It was supposed to be the system's crowning moment but it went over like a lead balloon and later modules kept the caravan encounters to a page or two in the back. Book 6 introduced the Masterwork Wagon (1,500 gp, 40 HP, 1 consumption, 6 cargo, 6 travelers, +1 AC, no limit) but they were still money sinks and by that point it was too little, too late. With Jade Regent caravan system James Jacobs created a set of rules so bad that even Paizo couldn't repackage them later on. He stated that the caravan's weak points came from a lack of playtesting, and while that statement is technically true the problems with the caravan system are so huge that should have been noticed while they were being written. Simply taking a minute to notice that the numbers on the monsters go up without effort while the numbers on the players don't would have spotted the problem, as would have spending 10 minutes to create a sample mid-level caravan and comparing it to a monster to notice that one set of numbers was much bigger than the other. Game designers take note: the caravan rules aren't a pile of garbage because of Paizo's failure to do playtesting, they're a pile of garbage because of Paizo's failure to do basic math.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:50
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Golden Bee posted:LightWarden, do you have a background in accountancy or systems analysis? You're exhaustively good at breaking (and breaking down) systems. Not really. I have a science background so I won't say it's nothing, but a good chunk of this came from just absorbing character optimization stuff from guides for a few years before I finally sat down and started asking myself exactly why certain things break the way they did and why so many people had similar stories about how things failed in their games. From there I started getting a wider view of how the various systems interacted and could start doing my own investigations and analysis. So basically be a munchkin until I understood why being a munchkin works then use the munchkin senses to probe for weaknesses and figure out why those weaknesses exist. sfwarlock posted:Please tell me there were rules for dying of dysentery along the way. Sort of. They already have rules for a dysentery disease (which slowly saps a character's HP and leaves them unable to do much) in a different book, but caravans don't follow the same disease rules as characters. That said, there are a few disease-esque events that crop up in Book 3. One of them is a random encounter with a bunch of headless mummies and if the caravan gets hit it needs to take make a DC 18 Security check or be cursed and take a cumulative -1 penalty to AC, Security and Resolve checks, which means it becomes easier and easier for the mummies to dogpile you into a death spiral (and since these guys are about as tough as the yetis they don't need all that much help doing it). Removing the penalty requires a casting of remove disease and either remove curse or break enchantment per instance of the penalty (a -4 penalty will require 4 castings), so you'd better have one or more clerics on hand to help you or you're in for a short trip (though by this point at least you made it to the last third of the module somehow  ).Another random encounter is the Creeping Rot encounter, which means your provisions have been contaminated with some sort of sickness (could it be dysentery? Only the DM knows). Each day it persists it destroys 1 box of provisions (food for 10 people), and you take a cumulative -1 penalty to AC, Attack and Resolve checks plus a 25% penalty to speed. So after four days of this you're immobilized. You need to make a DC 25 Security check to contain the spread for a day, but you can only stop entirely and remove the penalties it by succeeding on two consecutive successful checks. This is one of the highest Caravan DCs in the module, but you do get a bonus to the check for every healer on the caravan and every character able to purify food or remove diseases. Needless to say, running out of food is very bad because you start taking 1d6 points of damage every 12 hours and can't heal until you have enough food to feed your entire caravan. Lack of food also fatigues your caravan, halving its movement speed and taking a -2 penalty to all checks, which means it takes twice as to get to some place with food and you're probably going to do a lot worse in any random encounter you come across. When combined with Creeping Rot it's possible that you can run out of food and not be able to move at all to find more, and thus will be forced to use casters, scouts and cooks just to try to stay food solvent. While you can run across cannibals in the module, there isn't a direct conversion rate between crewmembers and stores of food and stocking up on people meat from the cannibals means that you take a permanent -2 penalty to resolve because the rest of the caravan can't believe you just did that. There are also rules for Fording Rivers, though sadly they aren't very exciting: You make a Security check to find a place to ford, then a security check to ford it (no rules for caulking the wagons and floating them across though). Each check takes one or more hours with a failure meaning you have to either increase the DC by 4 or turn back and start over, plus every hour you roll to see if someone shows up and tries to steal your poo poo and/or eat you. If you detour through the hill country (where the cannibals live) then you have to make four DC 22 checks at 1d4 hours apiece to ford that particular river at the end of the route, compared to only two DC 17 checks if you follow the traditional trade route (and thus are easier to spot/ambush, also there is somewhat less treasure in those encounters). While I mentioned how painful combat can be, failing Security checks checks isn't a picnic either. There aren't very many fixed encounters that rely on Security aside from an avalanche if you travel through the hill country, where you need to make two DC 20 Security checks with a -4 penalty from terrain to avoid being taking damage, being buried and then having to spend 1d12 hours per wagon digging them out (assuming the check succeeds). Another one is the giant murder storm that the ghost of the module boss sends after you if the caravan attempts to deviate from the plot railroad, where you have to make 3 DC 25 Resolve and Security checks per day, with failure on the Resolve checks giving a cumulative -2 penalty to Security and Resolve checks until you get out of the murder storm and failure on the Security checks cutting your speed by a third for the day and dealing 5d6 damage. In other words, you're going to die quickly unless you do what the NPCs want you to do (shades of the Mines of Moria here). While you aren't guaranteed to face any particular random encounter, there still are enough hazards such as broken wheels or poisonous swamps that you're going to want to have a decent Security score. You might be thinking "well, guess that means I'm going to have to go light on Resolve if I want to afford everything else" and you'd be right except for one other piece of mechanics I forgot to mention: Unrest. Basically, whenever you lose a wagon, a minion, or a day of travel, or get knocked down to 25% HP or lower you need to roll a Resolve check of DC 20+your current Unrest to avoid gaining another point of Unrest. If your Unrest exceeds your Morale score (not your Resolve, your basic Morale, which starts at 1 and can only go up to 10 if you heavily invest in it) then you take a -1 cumulative penalty to AC, Attack, Security and Resolve for each point of Unrest above your morale and you then need to make a Resolve check each day at DC 20 + your current Unrest. Failing this check means you only travel half as far, while failing by 5 or more means either you don't move at all or the caravan goes half your move speed in a completely random direction other than the one you wanted which is really bad when you're in the middle of hostile terrain. The only way to reduce Unrest is either through leveling, boosting Morale or through doing things the people like (such as adding wagons or improvements to your wagons, taking a day off or having a feast), but the latter option requires you to succeed at the same DC 20 + current Unrest Resolve check in order for it to actually have any effect. So if your Morale wasn't particular good to start with because you were boosting other stats just to survive in combat, one or two bad events and failed Resolve checks mean you develop a penalty to all checks which leads to more bad events and failed Resolve checks and could snowball your way past your ability to keep order or make progress since spending time camped in the tundra trying to make them like you means you're just going to be burning through supplies. Sadly you can't :commisar: your way out of this, so about the only option that doesn't involve making rolls with increasing penalties is to give them 1 unit of trade goods for 1 point of Unrest reduction, or 1 unit of party treasure (about 500 gp) for 3 points of Unrest reduction, but each time you try to bribe them the cost goes up by another unit for the same reduction. You can't be clever and swipe it back because the treasure mysteriously vanishes from the caravan even if there's nowhere within hundreds of miles that they could have spent it. Unrest occurs even if the caravan pretty much all PCs and named NPC friends by volume- you may be a party of eight dragon slayers but one wagon driver didn't like how you stalled out fighting slimes and now he's going to turn this caravan around.  The caravan rules have so many possible fail states and fail spirals that you can't really cover all the potential holes; only luck (or ditching it) will save you.
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Mar 6, 2015 04:59
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Might as Well Face It, You're Addicted to Suck Vampires have long been a multi-use subject for plots and metaphors in stories, and RPGs are no different. Vampires were present in the earliest rules for the most basic release of D&D as a type of powerful undead and were fleshed out further in the first Greyhawk supplement, and have been a staple of the game ever since. Almost as long-lived are the rules for playing them. The story goes that Arneson had people playing good guys and bad guys, with one of the players opting to play a vampire named Sir Fang, modeled off Christopher Lee's character in the Hammer Horror films, which prompted another player to base a character based on Van Helsing as played by Peter Cushing in the same films. As the character was fleshed out, they added in healing and curing abilities and basically created the first cleric class (called a priest at the time). There's also the tale of later games where a character could become a vampire by advancing through the undead ranks from a skeleton with some interesting results. Editions come and go and by the time 3e comes around Vampires have developed a pretty large laundry list of abilities amassed from the vampire stories of the time: drinking blood, draining life force, incredible strength and durability, supernatural agility, mind control, shapeshifting, the ability to scale walls, mastery over creatures of the night, the creation of lesser vampire minions. Even better the stats were presented in the form of a template that could be applied to any sort of humanoid (such as a human or elf) or monstrous humanoid (such as a minotaur or medusa) so you could create a wide variety of vampires with various racial and class bases to fit the needs of your game. Well, that was the theory at any rate. In practice it's a little more difficult because you have to figure out what exactly such a template is worth. Slapping a bunch of abilities onto a character would make them far stronger than they were before, so how do you measure that? The solution WotC came up with is the concept of Level Adjustment, where every template (and playable monster race) had modifier that indicated that the abilities offered by your template boosted your power to the point where you counted as a character one or more levels higher than you actually were. A race such as the drow (dark elves) possesses improved stats, minor magical abilities and spell resistance compared to their surface-dwelliing kin and thus have a level adjustment of +2., so with all the powers that a vampire has, you're looking a level adjustment of +8, so a character with 2 levels in a class and the vampire template counts as a level 10 character. This is a bit of a problem, because your vampire will have only 2d12 HP total because undead do not have Constitution scores on account of not having working bodies, and thus they don't add anything to their HP totals, so you're looking at less than 20 HP on your 10th level character (1st hit die is maximized). If anything gets past your defenses you will die to an at-level sneeze. Admittedly when you do you can probably float off and recuperate in your coffin, but it's still going to take you out of the action for a day. If you were level 10 before a vampire sunk its teeth into you then you'd count as an 18th level character and you and your 10d12 HP (70.5 average) would be eligible for end-game content. If this happened during play as part of a plot event you'd be in a weird place because by the rules you'd just been slingshotted into the highest level bracket way above your friends, but yet still have the gear of a 10th level character and basically woefully unprepared for the challenges you're supposed to face without the infusion of half a million gp worth of magical items. Of course, you'd also be woefully unprepared for the challenges you're supposed to face just by the game's math- a monster of a given Challenge Rating (CR) is supposed to be something that can be fought by a party of four characters of an equivalent level and cause them to expend about a quarter of their daily resources (hp, spells, etc). A basic humanoid of a particular level is supposed to have a CR equal to its level, but while the vampire template adds +8 to your effective character level, it only adds +2 the CR because the game doesn't consider the vampire's abilities that much of a game-changer on the field of battle. The CR system is a pile of broken crap to begin with, but even it thinks that there's something screwy with playing a vampire in 3e. While level adjustment pretends you're a character of a higher level, it runs into several problems with the level system itself. The most basic problem is that levels in any one thing come at the opportunity cost of not being able to take levels in another thing while characters advance in ability as they level- this means that any time you level outside of your main class you're effectively trading high-level abilities for low-level ones. Most of the time this is a horrible deal except in the cases where either your high level abilities are nothing worth writing home about, the low-level abilities are just that good, or you have no illusions of the game ever actually reaching the highest levels of play. Compounding matters is that while you can take a level in any class, not all levels are created equal. A 20th level fighter is an improvement over a 1st level fighter- over twenty times tougher due to all the extra HP, plus better skill at combat through things like an improved attack bonus, extra attacks per round and feats. But a 20th level wizard doesn't just have over twenty times the spell count of a 1st level wizard, but a host of abilities a 1st level wizard can't even begin to comprehend, abilities such as enhancing your senses, traveling up or through walls, flight, remote viewing, shapeshifting, mind control, reanimating an army, predicting the future, teleportation, demiplane creation, absolute immunity to spells, mass homicide and time manipulation. Your old spells get better range, duration and damage, and you get better spells that have even more powerful effects, while your warrior friends merely improve on their base capabilities for the most part. This general phenomenon is referred to as "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards" and means that for the most part that while a fighter could justify taking a level in barbarian or something because there aren't too many high-level fighter-exclusive abilities, it's rarely worth it for a caster to take levels in a noncaster class because you're sacrificing high-end spells for low-end features. It gets more interesting when you factor in prestige classes (often abbreviated as PrCs), which were introduced in 3e as sort of an alternate advancement representing certain specialized options (of which there were hundreds). While multiclassing would normally hurt your caster character because you'd be sacrificing spell progression, one of the key features in many 3.5e PrCs was the spell advancement feature where they stacked with your casting class to determine your spellcasting ability (for example: the archmage). When you look at sorcerers and wizards you'll notice that wizards don't gain any higher level features aside from spells and bonus feats, while sorcerers have no high level features at all aside from spells. Thus there's basically no reason not to level into a caster-boosting PrC as fast as possible because you get to keep all your spellcasting features and get more features on top of that, basically turning you into caster+1. In fact, there was no real reason not to plan out your character build so that you could hit various PrCs for a few levels of features and then roll onto the next one in a form of character progression somewhere between a slalom and a pub crawl. It may have required monumental rules awareness, reduced the class system to an overly complicated talent tree and created character class summaries longer than this sentence, but it was the road to ultimate power in 3e. When compared to all the power you could amass through levels, sacrificing eight of them for the vampire's abilities was unthinkable for a caster and not really worth for a noncaster either. Even the lich as the peak of the casting undead was an unfavorable trade with a level adjustment of +4; enough to lock you out of your highest level of spells in exchange for some immunities, stat boosts and a few special abilities (that could all be replicated by your spells). It got to the point where the lich template was a free party favor for achieving the 20th level of the Dread Necromancer class and the class was still just the middle of the pack of full casters when compared to the power of a wizard hopped up on PrC. The Unearthed Arcana supplement introduced rules for buying down your level adjustment by spending experience points so you'd only be a little bit behind your adventuring buddies and better able to fold your abilities into your character's advancement as they ceased to be worth the same amount of levels when compared to the capabilities of a higher-level character. Unfortunately, only a Level Adjustment of +3 or lower could be bought down more than once (and bought off entirely), and at +8 LA there are simply no rules for the reduction of the vampire's LA. Even if you decided to go through with this unfair deal, your +8 LA vampire is still stuck with a host of vampire weaknesses such as sunlight, running water and holy symbols; there's the Vampire Lord template that loses these weaknesses and gains even more abilities, but that's a template only for NPC monsters. Pathfinder unceremoniously dumpstered the Level Adjustment rules so the question of "how do I play a vampire?" went back to "ask your DM." Exactly how much this increase in power should cost your character remains uncertain, but the DM is free to make poo poo up, presumably while also slapping various benefits on on other player characters to compensate. Back in 2012, Paizo released Blood of the Night, a short (~32 pages) player companion book about various types of vampires, including rules for playing as dhampir, a race of half-breeds descended from the undead (and often dedicating themselves to hunting down and/or brooding about their undead kin). While it provided no concrete rules for determining a vampire character's value, it does include various vampire character options, such as feats, spells, and rules for hunger and withdrawal. Hunger rules are almost as key to vampires as rules for all their sweet powers. Even if the game doesn't immediately come with them, it will probably show up sooner or later. Back in 2e, the Van Richten's Guide to Vampires supplement for the Ravenloft setting introduced its own rules for vampires, and gave them age categories that let them advance in power and ability over the years (not unlike dragons). It also introduced feeding rules: A newly-created fledgling vampire needs to drink 12 hit points worth of blood within a 24 hour period, consuming 1d4 HP per round of drinking blood (or 12 HP per round if the vampire rips open the victim's throat and drinks that). A vampire can't drain a target past -10 HP since the target is dead of blood loss at that point, and should the victim survive, the damage can be restored through spells or natural healing as normal. As a vampire ages, the amount of blood it requires per 24 hours is reduced by 1 point per age category, so the top of the line patriarchs only require 6 HP per day (but generally really want to drink more than that). Should a vampire go 24 hours without consuming enough blood it will lose 1 Hit Die (and all the bonuses that come with it) and effectively loses one age category per missed feeding when it comes to determining its strength, magic resistance and sunlight tolerance. These can't be reduced below the Fledgling level, but it can lose HD until it hits 1 HD, at which point the vampire goes feral and attacks any source of blood it can find. Each day of successful feeding will restore the vampire by 1 HD and 1 age category, so it's best to keep up on your drinking habit. Incidentally, here's the rules for what happens if a PC is turned into a vampire: Van Richten's Guide to Vampires posted:Vampires With Surviving "Goodness" The rules are: screw you 3e doesn't use Ravenloft's age categories for vampires and the ensuing loss of power from abstaining, but it does have rules for general undead hunger introduced in Libris Mortis, a book whose rules for undead cover raising them, controlling them, fighting them and even playing as them.   The most horrifying thing about these the level adjustments Various undead may dine upon various different things such as blood, flesh, bone, or energy. An undead creature's diet is further broken into one of three categories: Not Required, Diet Dependent or Inescapable Craving. If it's in the Not Required category, the food is just something the undead creature enjoys, but suffers no penalty from missing meals. Should a creature go too long without a meal, it must make a Will save every so often or have its Wisdom score reduced by the gnawing hunger, which will further reduce its Will save bonus. An undead reduced to 0 Wisdom is a ravenous creature who will pursue its chosen food even to the point of self-destruction (and if it's a player character it's under the DM's control until it feeds and recovers its Wisdom). For a Diet-Dependent creature, it's a DC 15 Will save every 3 days to avoid 2d4 Wis damage, while a creature with an Inescapable Craving needs to make a DC 25 save every day without feeding or take 1d6 Wis damage. Wisdom damage recovers at the rate of 1 per day only if the undead creature is feeding regularly, so going too long without a meal will put you in an incredibly bad position unless you have a fantastic Will save (but even then you'll need to watch out for rolling a natural 1). Unfortunately for the Vampire, they're Diet-Dependent on blood, but also have an Inescapable Craving for Life Force (acquired through their level-draining energy drain attack), making them (and their spawn) the only undead with two diet necessities to manage and thus two ways to be driven into a hunger-induced downward spiral. Even more reasons not to play one in 3e. When compared to the hunger rules in Van Richten's Guide and Libris Mortis, Pathfinder's (optional) rules look more like a hybrid approach. As in Libris Mortis you need to make a Will save each day after going without food for a number of days equal to your Hit Dice, but unlike that book the DC is equal to 10 + 1/2 your hit dice + 1 per previous check, so the difficulty will scale as you level and the longer you abstain. Even if you have a fantastic Will save and don't roll any natural 1s to autofail the check, the DC will eventually exceed your abilities after a month or so, so you'll fail and go into Withdrawal. Withdrawal is, as the name suggests, not good, because it provides a penalty to all your abilities that scales the more Will saves against hunger that you fail. The most obvious penalty is to Will saves themselves, ensuring that you'll spiral down even faster against the rising DCs. Your Strength and Charisma scores suffer an increasing penalty, so not only will you be weaker, but as an undead creature your Charisma governs your HP and the DCs of your special abilities. Other abilities that are penalized include your ability to disguise your increasingly gaunt frame in order to pass among the living, as well as things like Channel Resistance, Damage Resistance and Fast Healing if you have any of those abilities that make it harder for people to destroy you. Should the penalty to your Strength or Charisma scores equal or exceed your ability scores you go completely catatonic and can only be revived from your helpless state if someone else feeds you. On the bright side, you only need a single meal to remove all the penalties and reset the grace period to a number of days equal to your Hit Dice. If you're thinking "withdrawal penalties suck but at least the game isn't taking control of my character away from me," you'd be wrong. An undead creature in withdrawal needs to make a Will save at the same DC (and with the same Will penalties from withdrawal) every time it's within 10 feet of a helpless source of food, with a failure sending the creature into a feeding frenzy where it can do nothing else but attempt to feed until it's had a meal. Unlike with some other sources of fear or compulsions, a successful save doesn't immunize you for 24 hours, so you're still on the hook for as long as potential food is nearby. So not only can you not be trusted to stand watch while your allies are asleep, but if any of your allies are knocked out or paralyzed while in battle, you have not-terrible odds of making a bad situation worse (especially considering that you're already going to be underperforming in battle while under withdrawal penalties). The hunger rules aren't like regular hunger, and things that would protect normal creatures from hunger (such as a ring of sustenance to remove your need to eat) are explicitly called out as not working against undead hunger because it's not really hunger. In the game's words, "the act of feeding can be likened to that of an addict satiating her inner demon." Which is interesting because this set of rules is more mechanically punishing than an actual drug addiction. The way drugs in Pathfinder is not unlike the way they worked back in 3e when they were introduced in The Book of Vile Darkness (along with rules for things like demon worship, torture, S&M, and human sacrifice). Basically when you take a hit of something like opium, catnip, or some fantasy drug such as shiver you gain a temporary benefit for some amount of time plus some amount of ability score damage to represent its toll on the body and then must make a Fortitude save to avoid addiction. The rules for addiction are a little different depending on the book. In the BoVD, you need to fail saves for the initial primary and secondary effects of the drugs to affect you, and addiction works according to chart of different strengths ranging from Negligible to Vicious. Higher ratings have higher Fortitude DCs to avoid addiction, and shorter periods between satiation before you have to start making Fortitude saves to avoid ability damage (with higher rating drugs doing more damage to your system). Unfortunately, every two months you spend addicted to a drug with a rating other than negligible increases the addiction rating by one step, so 8 months of using simple low-threat drugs will mess you up as badly as even the worst stuff out there. Succeeding on two successive saves to fight off the ability damage from withdrawal means that you've kicked the habit, but if you take it up again you'll need to make saves against the same DCs as before. Spells such as lesser restoration can deal with ability score damage while remove disease cures the addiction, while greater restoration or heal do both. In Pathfinder, both the primary and secondary effects are automatic and addiction is a disease in the most literal game mechanic sense of the word. While addicted to drugs, you take a certain penalty to your ability scores that persist whenever you're not under the effects of the drug, but since most drugs only affect you for a couple minutes to a couple of hours, that's going to be most of the day. If you take a dose of a drug while you still haven't recovered from the ability damage of the previous dose, the DC to avoid addiction goes up by 2 per dose. This is a bit of a problem because if you're under the effects of a Moderate or Severe addiction you cannot naturally heal the ability damage caused by the drug you're addicted to, which means that without magical restoration it's just going to pile up in your system until your ability score hits 0 and you are rendered paralyzed, catatonic or just dead. If you're addicted to elven absinthe then you're going to take 1d4 Con damage that will not naturally heal, and drinking another dose means you're just taking 1d4 more Con damage and increasing the DC to recover by 2. If you're addicted and don't have access to things that remove ability damage then five drinks during the addiction period will kill an average dwarf (or an above average human or elf) through 5d4 unrecoverable Con damage. The upside to this is that addiction is actually rather easy to recover from. As a disease, you need to successfully make a series of two or three consecutive daily Fortitude saves against the disease to kick the habit, and the DC decreases by -2 for every day you spend not using it (down to a minimum of the base addiction DC). But unlike other diseases, the penalty from addiction is just a persistent one instead of a cumulative one, and there's no penalty for failing the saves aside from the fact that it's just going to take longer before you succeed several times in a row. You may feel crummy the entire time, but you won't get worse if you take a hit and there isn't a single mechanical element that will mentally compel you to do so. The only way you're taking more drugs is if you decide your character is taking more drugs (just like in real life, right)? If you do have magical access, not only can you use spells to remove ability damage so you can keep doing drugs without dying, but you can use spells to kick the habit entirely. If you go a day without using drugs then someone can use remove disease to break its hold over you on a successful cast (which isn't even the most unexpected thing remove disease can get rid of- that award goes to being impregnated). And if you're actually immune to disease then you can't get addicted at all, meaning that one of the best classes for handling substance abuse and/or casual hook-ups is the paladin thanks to its Divine Health feature (plus the ability to use your lay on hands feature to cast remove disease to help your fellow adventurers in vice). Doesn't matter what you're doing, you can always quit when you want to. Despite being the leader in vice-related shenanigans, the antipaladin isn't immune to disease, just the negative effects and thus could be addicted but not suffer any downsides because of it. Maybe it's just a little voice in the back of your mind telling you to do more drugs, but can you ever be cured of your non-addiction after doing enough drugs? But if immunity to disease makes you immune to addiction, does immunity to poison make you immune to the effects of the drugs? It's hard to tell. On one hand, drugs are specifically part of the poison descriptor for spells, the drug rules mimic the poison rules in their descriptors and many real-world drugs probably qualify as some form of toxin, but they specifically go out of their way not to refer to drugs as poisons, meaning that they can probably bypass poison immunity. Sadly, undead and constructs are immune to all effects that require a Fortitude save anyways (unless it's harmless or affects objects) so they're immune to addiction, probably immune to the initial effects and certainly immune to ability damage, so no toking with the spirits (unless they're psychopomps). But if immunity to disease blocks addiction and immunity to poison blocks drugs, then the best class for doing a mountain of cocaine with no ill effects whatsoever is the monk thanks to having immunity to both disease (purity of body) and poison (diamond body). There's even the precedent of the drunken master archetype, which takes the fighting style whose movements involve mimicking those of a drunk and adds real alcohol to the mix (which the game counts as an addictive drug if frequently used). One minor problem: archetypes involve trading some class features for others, and among the features the drunken master archetype replaces with its own features are the monk's immunity to diseases and poisons. Your substance abuse is going to tear your party and liver apart. Meanwhile the alchemist class gains immunity to poison while the monk-like internal alchemist archetype also picks up immunity to disease and as an alchemist you will probably never be short on interesting concoctions to shove up your nose. If you want super powers, an unnatural body and an affordable substance problem, be an alchemist and freebase a dragon. It's certainly better than being a vampire.
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Mar 31, 2015 06:51
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So the rules for playing a vampire are a nonstarter in 2e, horrendously overpriced in 3e, and are vague and unfavorably compared to an opium addiction in Pathfinder... so, what about 4e? Monsters and PCs don't use the same rules in 4e, so slapping on a template doesn't really work the same way it did in 3e. There was a vampire template in the DMG, but for NPC monsters rather than player characters, and even rules for new undead types and abilities in the undead supplement Open Grave weren't intended for player use at all. One of the first vampire-esque options was published in the online Dragon Magazine 371 and were republished in Dragon Magazine Annual 2009 (which is a bit of deceptive name since the book didn't sell well enough for any later versions of Dragon Manaul Annual). These were the rules for the dhampyr (half-vampires) and were designed by one of the people who worked on Open Grave. As the author explained in DMA 2009, the intent was for the dhampyr option to be open to any character, so rather than make it a single race he designed it in the form of a feat you took to represent your vampiric heritage in system loosely based off of 4e's multiclass system. Unlike in 3e where multiclassing means you're replacing one class level with another, 4e multiclassing involves spending a feat that grants you a bonus skill and limited-use ability from the new class, which is pretty nice, but what's better is that you also count as that class for the purpose of qualifying for things like magic items, feats, or paragon paths Paragon Paths are like 3e's Prestige Classes where you get extra options, but unlike 3e they supplement your abilities from level 11 to 20 instead of replacing them. Access to a good chunk of options for a class is pretty nice, and most character concepts can be spiced up with a multiclass feat. The only real downside is that most characters only have one multiclass slot so they have to pick and choose their favorites. Being a Dhmpyr means that you just spend a feat, get an ability and also qualify for other dhampyr feats and paragon paths (though it doesn't consume your multiclass slot). This means that just about any class/race combination can get in touch with their inner vampire. So, what do you actually get? Well, you count as a vampire for the purpose of effects, you get a bonus to checks to recognize dhampyrs and undead and you also get an encounter power that lets you chomp on dudes to spend a healing surge. Backing up a little, let's flesh out some terms here. Encounter powers are somewhat of an extension of some of the experimenting that was done in the 3.5e Tome of Battle and other books that were released towards the end of the edition. Essentially, while spells and the like served as the bulk of a party's options and power for the day back in earlier editions, a conscious effort was made to give everyone special abilities the could trigger in a fight, be they magical or made from some combination of effort and circumstance. Encounter powers were a midway point between your workhorse at-will powers (which tended to come with more abilities than a simple attack with a sword or crossbow; more class-appropriate too) and the "big guns" of your daily powers. Since you regained all your encounter powers during a short rest (about five minutes) while your daily powers were only regained after an extended rest (around six hours), encounter powers meant that you always had something nice and class appropriate that you could bust out in every fight without worrying about squirreling it away in case you needed it later. Healing surges are a representation of your character's inner well of resolve and endurance that keeps them going far beyond what ordinary people can endure. Each class has a certain base number of healing surges ranging from about 6 for the squishiest to around 9 for the tougher classes, and that number is further modified by your Constitution modifier and various feats and features. Whenever you spend a healing surge you restore a certain amount of HP equal to your healing surge value, which starts at 1/4th your maximum HP but can be modified further by various abilities. During a short rest you can expend any number of healing surges and recover your surge value from each as you tend your wounds or push through lesser injuries or whatever in a process that's somewhere between the reserve points rules from Unearthed Arcana and the "everyone sits and passes around the Cure Light Wounds wand" routine from 3e. While this means that characters have an extra 150% or more HP floating around, it's far harder to access in the middle of a fight. The only native way for all characters to regain HP during a fight is to use their Second Wind ability for that heroic change of pace, but for most characters that will only restore one surge worth of HP and takes up their standard action so they aren't attacking for a turn (though it does provide a defensive bonus similar to using Total Defense for that turn). If you're getting smashed by monsters than your second wind won't cut it, and you'll have to rely on powers from that let you spend a healing surge to keep you from taking a dirt nap, which usually come from clerics and other healer/leader-types. At 1/2 HP you're considered Bloodied, which usually is a sign that you need healing, though there are various abilities out there that have additional effects whenever you or your target are bloodied as part of the idea that poo poo Just Got Real, whether it be giving you a boost to defend yourself at a critical moment or finish off a severely wounded enemy. Your surge pool only gets restored after an extended rest, so constant beatings will slowly deplete it as will draining effects from enemy monsters (such as wights) and environmental hazards, plus some character abilities cost surges to either use or improve them, so running low on surges is usually a good sign that you need to pack it in for the day. The dhampyr's blood drain power thus would be a decent way to provide some offensive healing in a fight if it weren't for a issues: one is that the damage is kind of garbage for an ability that takes most of your turn to use, and the other is that it only works on targets you have grabbed. Grabbed is a special status effect that's delivered by some powers in a simplification of the previously labyrinthine grappling rules, most commonly in the form of the Grab ability which any character can use. The problem with this is that not only does making a grab attack as a standard action usually mean that you're forgoing most of your turn just to hold an enemy still, but the attack uses your Strength bonus (which makes it worthless for those who dump that score) and even more importantly has a problem where it doesn't benefit from things things like the accuracy bonuses of your magic weapons or your specialization bonuses so it suffers a huge drop-off in accuracy and effectiveness as you level. There are classes who have powers that will grab the target as part of the attack, but that is a small portion of the classes and in most cases only one or two powers that grab, which really limits your options. Admittedly there's a feat you can take at 11th level that lets you use Blood Drain on anything granting Combat Advantage (a much easier status effect to acquire that represents any sort of quick advantage in the fight ranging from flanking to distractions to the enemy being stunned or something), but that's still another feat you have to pay and 10 levels you have to spend without being able to use your sweet vampire ability. Among the 4e classes there is one exception to the rule that grab attacks are either rare or weak: the brawler fighter. The class gets a free bonus to the Grab attack to help patch the accuracy gap and more importantly gets a bunch of powers that grab the target including one at-will attack that's as accurate and damaging as their basic weapon attacks (and can even be used off-turn as an opportunity action to snag enemies who are trying to sneak by. As an added bonus, the basic Grab attack is normally limited to grabbing targets no more than one size category larger than you are, while grabs inflicted by classes such as the fighter... aren't.  Even better, as a defender a dhampyr brawler fighter qualifies for the Bloodknight paragon path, which not only lets you recharge Blood Drain when you defeat foes and use it as a free action attack when you grab your enemies, but also comes with some nice powers including a really nice one that grants you a free attack each round to really pile on the pain. End result is that if you want to get the most out of being a half-vampire warrior you should look less like this:  And more like this:  (given how the Bloodknight mechanics combine with a certain pair of feats favored by the brawler fighter, a successful Blood Drain will usually end up suplexing your opponents and pinning them to the ground) But hey, maybe for some weird reason wrestling half-vampires just isn't your cup of blood and you want something with a little more style. What's out there? Well, in 2011 WotC put out Heroes of Shadow, a book dedicated to heroes who draw on the darker aspects of the world and its magic. Among those options were the Vryloka, a race of humans whose ancestors made a pact with the mysterious Red Witch that gave them unnatural vitality and turned them into living vampires who draw strength from their fallen foes. The same book also reprinted the Revenant race from Dragon 376, undead who rise from their graves to fulfill some fate. Revenants are their own race, and while they also count as their previous race for the purpose of meeting prerequisites, for some reason that doesn't include things such as size categories, so a halfling that comes back as a revenant will suddenly be six feet tall. Revenants have their own unique gimmick in that they're the only race in the game that remains conscious when at 0 HP or lower. While there are some penalties involved and they still die if they fail three death saves (a 1d20 roll made at the end of your turn when dying, 9 or lower is a failure, 10 to 19 is holding ground, 20 means you can spend a healing surge and regain consciousness) or if they reach a negative HP value of 50% of their total HP or worse, there are enough bonuses and ways to get around the penalties that revenants are among the toughest characters in the game to actually kill. Also, there's nothing stopping you from being a Revenant Vryloka and thus be 150% undead. The third race in the book was the Shade, a race of humans who have let shadow magic essentially claim their souls in exchange for mastery over shadow. Average racial features with the exception of the fact that all shade characters have one healing surge fewer than normal. Racial penalties were nonexistent in 4e before this book, and while the Vryloka also had a racial penalty (a -2 penalty to healing surge value when they're blooded (reduced to below 1/2 HP)), it was negligible at higher levels while the Shade's penalty was something you were always going to feel and the rest of the race wasn't anything worth writing home about compared to just being a drow or something. Should that not be enough to slake your thirst, Heroes of Shadow also introduced the Vampire class, with the idea behind it being that a class was a much better way to present a wide array of vampiric abilities that can be used every round in a fight and could fit a variety of races, while the vryloka was better if you wanted a fighter or cleric with some mild vampire flavor. They point out that you could be a vryloka vampire and thus be 150% vampire, but you could also be a revenant vryloka vampire and thus be 250% undead. Sadly you can't really be a dhampyr revenant vryloka vampire to be 200% vampire and 300% undead because the Vampiric Heritage feat requires you to be a living creature in order to take it (though if your DM waives that restriction, go wild). Perhaps the biggest idea behind the vampire is how it works with healing surges. Normally a character will have somewhere around 6 to 12 surges depending on how durable the class and character is, but there are some extremes. If you decide to make the worst decisions possible and play a Wizard (6 + Con modifier surges) with 8 Constitution (-1 modifier) and using the Shade race (-1 surges), you'd have 4 surges. Even though that's a minimum of about 100% of your HP in reserve, this is still a bad idea because you're liable to lose around a surge every fight or so unless you're awesome at completely avoiding all lucky blows from your opponent; while a few good hits from your enemies in a fight will empty your reserves in a hurry. Alternatively, if you were a member of one of the toughest classes, boosted your Constitution (or other durability score) at every opportunity and took every surge count booster you qualified for you could easily end up with a surge count in the high 20s to low 30s, meaning you could lose 100% of your HP every fight and still have some left over when the squishiest members start feeling the burn. In comparison, the vampire's surge count is 2. Not 2 + Con modifier, just 2. Lower than what you could get even if you tried your best to fail, the vampire is the least durable class by surge count alone. The class comes with regeneration through its Enduring Soul feature, but the regeneration only functions when you're bloodied (and thus turns off when you're above half HP) and isn't enough to outheal a sustained beating at any level. Assuming you survive the fight, your regeneration will get you back up to half HP, but spending your only two healing surges to go the rest of the distance will leave you drained for the day. This would be unfeasible if not for the vampire's Blood is Life class feature, which among other things lets a willing and adjacent ally lose a surge once during a short rest to allow you to regain your Bloodied value in HP. When combined with your regeneration this lets you top off after a battle pretty easily, and also serves as one of the most cost-effective forms of surge-based healing in the game. Not only do you get 1/2 your HP back from a resource that normally restores 1/4 of it but you can take that surge from anyone in the party who's willing to give it to you, letting you feed off of people who have surges to spare and ensuring that no party member is being depleted of surges faster than the others (which would force the party to stop and rest rather than endanger that member). Amusingly enough, one of the best classes for a vampire to feed off of is the paladin since they have the highest base surge count in the game (10 + Con modifier) and a tendency to pick up things that boost that number even farther partly to support their Lay on Hands ability (which lets them spend a surge to allow another character to regain HP without spending a surge). All you have to do is explain to that warrior of light that the best way for their selfless sacrifice to alleviate the most suffering is if it's poured down your undead throat. If there are no willing donors in the neighborhood, it's time to consider the unwilling ones. Among the tools in the beginner vampire's arsenal is the blood drinker encounter power, which is a power that the vampire can trigger upon successfully hitting a target with an at-will melee vampire power, which will deal extra damage and give the vampire a free healing surge, allowing you to keep up with the attrition. Even better, thanks to Blood is Life, if you end a short rest with more healing surges than your normal maximum, you lose any additional healing surges above your maximum and regain all of your lost HP instead. This means that your surge total isn't as important as it is for other classes, and the only thing that matters is being able to end the fight at (N+1)/N surges. This isn't risk-free though- as a vampire your abilities are melee to short-ranged only, so you're rarely more than a walk away from someone who can smack you one, and if you get hit hard enough that the only thing standing between you and unconsciousness is a healing power then you're going to spend have to spend a surge and lose your surplus. Since that one healing power is unlikely to recover all the HP you lost to get in so critical of a state and your regeneration tops at 1/2 your maximum HP, you're going to need to top off using an ally's surge rather than deplete your own surge pool and thus set yourself even farther back from the N+1 fullheal. This also makes you extremely vulnerable to effects from enemy attacks or environmental checks that drain healing surges; while you're immune to some effects just by being undead, the fact that you favor Dexterity and Charisma as stats mean that you have no real defense against things that target Fortitude or require Endurance checks. Several of your powers also allow you to lose a surge to boost their effects, meaning that those parts of the power are largely nonviable for a while unless you can go through a fight with no damages and surges to spare. You do gain another use of blood drinker at 7th level (and 11th with the Vampire Noble paragon path), and starting at level 9 you have daily powers that can also generate a surge, so you can start generating two or more surges at later levels to help you make up your deficit and get back to the fullheal faster. But for the first six levels you're essentially living paycheck to paycheck where you're only one or two bad hits or failed Endurance checks away from losing one too many surges and thus being forced to ask your allies if they'll spot you a cup of blood for the next fight (you'll pay it back, promise!). It's certainly an interesting method of modeling the vampire's hunger when compared to the saving throws of 3e or Pathfinder. At no point are you required to roll, nor is control of your character ever taken from you; all the game does is let you decide how and when to feed after reminding you that you are oddly frail and everything around you is magically delicious. Of course, the flip side to this is that while vampires in the other games fed maybe once a day to a once every couple of weeks, a 4e vampire can chow down a dozen times or more during an adventuring day. Furthermore, neither Blood is Life nor blood drinker restrict you to feeding on the living, with the flavor text for blood drinker handwaves your sustenance as "the life force of other creatures... whether it consists of blood, ichor or the unseen energy of life itself" so feel free to literally taste the rainbow. The book takes a similarly player-friendly approach to one of the other classic vampire problems- how to deal with the giant glowing ball of death in the sky. In previous editions vampires exposed to the sun are destroyed entirely in a round or two, but in 4e you take 5 damage per round where you end your turn in direct sunlight. The damage is radiant damage (a damage source used by many effects involving holy magic or powerful light, which leads to jokes about radiant clerics being "laser clerics" and radiant holy weapons being lightsabers), and as a vampire you have Radiant Vulnerability 5, meaning you take 5 extra damage from any source of radiant damage, so it's 10 damage per turn total (which is about as much damage as NPC vampires take in the sunlight), radiant damage also shuts down your regeneration for a round, and if you're reduced to 0 HP or lower by sun damage you're destroyed instantly instead of going into the normal negative HP/bleeding out stage. So a 1st level vampire with 20-some HP will last about three rounds in the sun (about a round or two longer than they would in an earlier edition), but you also gain 5 HP as you level so a higher level vampire might have a minute or two to find shelter. It's not just damage- a vampire PC who ends a turn in direct sunlight is also weakened (save ends), which means that they're afflicted with a condition that causes them to deal half damage until they save against it. In 4e, a "save ends" effect is a replacement for various long-duration effects, where you roll a 1d20 at the end of your turn and try to get a 10 or higher after applying any bonuses or penalties to successfully end the effect. Theoretically this means that it's much harder for either players or monsters to be locked out of a fight by a negative effect, especially when many characters (especially leaders) have recovery options that make or grant others saving throws outside of the end of their turns and thus potentially allow them to get out of an effect before it can do too much damage. This is especially nice due to the fact that it's a d20 roll against a target of 10, so it's easier to make than it would be when compared to a 3e or PF ability that allows you to try to save against the effect again (which won't help you much if your save could only succeed on a natural 20 anyway). Between the damage and weakening effect a 4e vampire won't instantly die in the sunlight, but it's not something you want to put up with any longer than necessary. Rather than make your entire party plan their adventurers around the vampire's operating hours and preferred environment, the game only applies the sunlight effects "if you end your turn in direct sunlight and lack a protective covering such as a cloak or other heavy clothing". While the designers suggest that maybe you might draw looks if you're heavily wrapped, it effectively means sunlight is only going to be a problem if the DM or players decide it needs to be one. So, with the class system allowing the game to dole out vampire abilities at a steady pace, the player-friendly nature of vampire weaknesses making it easier to play in an adventure and the unique surge mechanics offering a new and compelling take on both healing and hunger, you might be tempted to call the vampire a triumph in design. Then you'd remember which thread we're in. The vampire has a couple of problems. Problem 1 is that most of the class is on rails. Due to the game having fixed levels for handing out certain iconic abilities such as your mesmerizing gaze or ability to turn into a bat, there are very few levels in which you get to make a decision about your class abilities; only at level 2 and 22 do you get a choice between two powers, everything else is fixed. To be fair there are people out there who would find this a perfectly acceptable situation, forgoing the hassle of sifting and choosing from the vast arrays of abilities possessed by other classes to enjoy the iconic vampire experience provided by a well-designed class. Problem 2 is that the vampire is not a well-designed class. As part of the design process for 4e, the original designers reviewed the character classes and attempted to identify the various party roles they occupied. This wasn't a new idea; WotC designers had done a similar process in the 3.5e Player's Handbook II, breaking down the classes into the following roles: Warrior: Responsible for fighting monsters and stalling them so that your companions can do their thing (Fighter) Expert: Has lots of skills to fill different roles (Rogue) Arcane Spellcaster: Have powerful spells to destroy the greatest threat (Wizard) Divine Spellcaster: Has powerful spells that support the party (Cleric) These are admittedly kind of vague categories, with some defined by what you do in a fight, others by what you do everywhere else, and others by the kind of magic they have. For 4e the design team eventually narrowed it down to four categories based on how the character functioned in combat. Defender: Highest defenses and HP, serve as the front line to protect weaker characters (Fighter) Striker: Deals high damage to single targets, the highest in the game, uses good mobility to go towards or away from the greatest threat (Rogue) Controller: Able to lock down opponents, wiping out the weakest enemies en masse and disabling strong ones while the rest of the party works (Wizard) Leader: Heals injuries but also boosts allies to help them destroy the enemy faster (Cleric) Roles aren't iron-clad; most classes have a secondary role or two (the paladin is a defender with some leader abilities), and later books introduced subclasses of classes who might have a different role (the slayer is a fighter who is a striker instead of a defender). Different classes with the same role (such as paladin and fighter) will play radically differently, and even two characters of the same class can play uniquely (such as a cleric who shoots spells at foes vs. a cleric who helps allies by hitting monsters in the face with a hammer). What roles do is allow designers to have benchmarks and goals for classes to hit (even in different ways) so they can remain viable in various parties. So all leaders need some sort of healing and support ability, while defenders need some form of "stickiness" to keep monsters from wandering off in search of squishier targets. The 4e vampire is designed as a striker with some secondary control powers, fitting for a manipulative predator. And while it lacks any mind control abilities, the rogue can serve as a decent comparison, since that's also a lightly armored dexterity-based class focused on picking off targets of opportunity and possesses a useful bag of tricky abilities. The problem is that most good strikers have the ability to point themselves at an enemy of their level and decide "this one needs to die right now" and then make good on that statement. The vampire has no real native abilities that let it turn up the volume on an enemy of interest and just go to town. You might be satisfied with this and decide that with all the vampire's utility powers such as the form of a bat you don't need to be a top-of-the-line striker, just one who's good enough to pull your own weight. Well... As you gain levels you're going to be facing higher-level threats, and monsters have a steady gain in HP as they level. So you need to keep boosting your attack damage every level just to tread water and defeat monsters in the same amount of time. The vampire's biggest striker feature is its Hidden Might ability, which lets you add your Charisma modifier to damage rolls of vampire and vampire paragon path attack powers. As striker features go, getting to add a secondary stat to damage rolls isn't that uncommon, nor is it particular terrible, but how useful it is depends on what powers you have and that's where the vampire falls short. While blood drinker is nice for generating surges, it's only a handful of d10s worth of extra damage per use, which isn't really all that much, and it gets worse when you look at your level 3 feral assault power or its level 17 upgrade; while they technically do more damage than your at-will abilities, both would be considered rather subpar by striker standards and that's after you use the option to lose a healing surge to give the power extra targets or a few extra dice of damage. The daily powers aren't much better, their bat swarm AoE and its upgrades are serviceable at best since they're more about damaging groups than focusing down a dangerous target, and while the mesmeric gaze ability is nice because you get it fairly early on at level 9 and mind control never goes out of style, they get a daily power at level 5 that never gets upgraded again. While the encounter-long boosts it provides to accuracy, damage, and movement are good for characters of any level, it also prevents you from using healing surges to heal for the entire fight; manageable, but if you get clocked hard enough and your party has no surgeless healing available you are basically boned because 4e regeneration doesn't function when you're below 1 HP unless otherwise specified. For comparison, there's a wizard gimmick build out there that can also add its secondary stat to damage and thus can do similar damage while being able to hit far more targets at once thanks to area attack spells and also enjoys all the power and feat support that comes with being a loving wizard.  Specifically, this wizard Your abilities don't offer much, and neither do your powers, making feats and items your last resort for boosting your damage to meet the benchmarks. Unfortunately for you, you're not exactly doing so hot on that front either. Classes have power sources in addition to roles- the rogue and fighter both use the martial power source while bards and wizards use arcane and clerics and paladins use divine. Power source options can be used by anyone whose class (or multiclass) is part of that power source, so fighters and rogues can take advantage of feats that let them get the most out of different weapon groups while bards and wizards can get the ability to quickly cast their spells. There are useful feats and options out there, except the vampire's power source is Shadow and support for that power source as a whole is basically nonexistent outside of Heroes of Shadow (and basically nonexistent inside of it as well). There are no abilities in HoS that are restricted to the shadow power source, partly due to the fact that all the other subclasses introduced in the book draw on both shadow as a power source plus whatever power source their parent class used. Items aren't much better, because vampire characters tend to forgo weapons and armor in favor of their supernatural agility and abilities; thus vampire characters use magical implements to focus and enhance the magic that animates them. Magic implements are the caster version of magic weapons- they make your numbers go up so you can face higher level foes and hopefully have enough cool properties that it's as exciting to get a good magic staff as it is to find a nice sword of frost. You might find it weird to have your vampire using abilities with the help of a magic stick, but staves and wands are not vampire implements (the game does allow you to use your powers with any implement you're proficient with, so with the right feats you can use your powers through a magic staff or even a magic tome if you decide you really need a copy of Dracula to help you focus your powers). The implements of the vampire class are of the more subtle (and hands-free) variety: holy symbols and ki focuses, which may serve as symbols of the powers that created you and a focus for your reverence or vengeance, or the symbols you turn to to remind yourself of what you are and what you lost. Whatever your flavor piece may be, come crunch time you'll discover that there aren't a whole lot of stand-out ki focuses on account of them being a relative latecomer to the game (debuting in the PHB3) and not receiving a whole lot of support, and while there are some great holy symbols out there, most of them are designed for people with a decidedly less murder-y set of class features and won't really help you put enemies in the ground. Except for one. The Sun Disk of Pelor (holy symbol for the 4e god of the sun) converts all damage dealt using the symbol into radiant damage (the aforementioned holy/light damage source). This is nice because radiant damage is one of the best types of damage in the game. It's one of the least commonly resisted damage types (mostly just angels who resist it, and if you're fighting angels something has gone horribly wrong), and it's also the most common vulnerability in the game since it's the vulnerability of choice for most undead, including you. While the Sun Disk is turned on, your hands will be glowing with awesome undead-shattering power, though it won't hurt you unless an enemy uses an ability that makes you attack yourself. The vampire also has an at-will mesmeric gaze ability that deals psychic damage and draws enemies closer; with the Sun Disk converting that damage into radiant damage it means you now have some form of magnetic lasers eyes. The strength of radiant damage isn't that it's uncommonly resisted and good for destroying common undead enemies (or its amusing interactions with your undead abilities), it's that radiant damage is staggeringly easy to boost, especially if you're a divine character. Divine worshipers of solar deities can take the Power of the Sun feat to hand out radiant vulnerability to any enemy in the game at-will with certain powers, or the Solar Enemy feat to increase that vulnerability for a short time. If your divine character worships the Forgotten Realms sun god Amaunator (or you can convince your DM that the local sun deity is an acceptable equivalent) you qualify for the Morninglord paragon path, which grants the ability to inflict Radiant Vulnerability 10 for a turn to any target you hit with a radiant power. This is an extremely nice ability; Radiant Vulnerability 10 is even worse than your own vampire radiant vulnerability and it is very easy for characters to do radiant damage. Most divine characters can have one or more at-will radiant powers right out of the gate, but even a fighter can pick up a weapon that will convert damage into radiant damage just as the Sun Disk does- the Sunblade is the earliest option for sword users, followed by the Crusader's Weapon for hammer and mace users, but any weapon user can pick up an excellent Radiant Weapon by the time the Morninglord Paragon Path takes off. This is the cornerstone of a party optimization gimmick nicknamed "the Radiant Mafia" and it gets even more ridiculous when you start adding on options that boost the vulnerability or your damage against targets who are vulnerable to radiant damage, as well as when you can attack multiple times per round and trigger the vulnerability with every attack. It says something about the vampire's choices that its strongest option for damage out-of-the-box is to shack up with a party devoted to everything that will destroy you. But hey, with the right divine multiclass feat even you could be a Morninglord and devote yourself to handing out its fiery doom. Praise the Sun! All hail the Burning Hate! The Vampire Noble is the paragon path actually designed for the vampire, granting the vampire a third use of blood drinker and thus the ability to generate three surges per encounter. The rest of the features depend on which thematic bloodline you choose to embrace. The Beguiler bloodline is supposed to be a manipulative social predator, while the Stalker bloodline is about being more of a bestial hunter. Of the two the Stalker is the inferior one since its features include a bonus to Nature checks (a skill you don't have that relies on an ability score you don't use) and its big gun daily power is a wolf transformation that provides mediocre bonuses in exchange for preventing you from using any of your other abilities until you change back, and you don't even make any attacks during the standard action you use to start this crummy transformation. The Beguiler's bonuses all involve skills that you have and want, and all of its powers can be used with the rest of your abilities to provide some crowd-control options for corralling or evading enemies. One feature they both share is that at level 16 you no longer take damage from being in the sunlight thanks to some form of supernatural strength (Beguilers cloak their presence while the Stalkers draw upon their connection to nature). Your radiant vulnerability remains, and ending your turn in the sunlight still weakens you, but both paths allow you to add your Charisma bonus to saves against the weakening effect of the sun. Your Charisma bonus will be around +5 or more at this point, so with other bonuses such as a +2 bonus from a feat and a +2 bonus from the right magic item you can have a +9 or higher bonus to saves and thus succeed at getting a 10 or higher even on a natural 1, assuming no penalties from your enemies. Since end of turn effects can be applied in any particular order the player chooses, you can end your turn in sunlight, become weakened (save ends) and then immediately make your end-of-turn save against it and thus be under the effect for a mere fraction of a second to ensure you are never more than mildly inconvenienced by the sun. Should that not be enough for you, multiclass into paladin. At 11th level Paladins qualify for the Hero's Poise feat, which grants a bonus equal to your Charisma modifier to the saves of allies within 5 squares until the start of your next turn every time you successfully make a saving throw. This is a great feat with a great bonus, and it plays well with other great abilities that let you save at the start of your turn in addition to the end, since not only will you have two chances to save, but you'll also have a chance to end the effect before it interferes with your turn. For a Vampire Noble Paladin you can successfully make a saving throw every single round and thus provide a tactical boost to your allies that can make them borderline immune to "(save ends)" effects provided you parade around in the sunlight in all your incandescent splendor.  This is the skin of a killer, Bella... it provides +5 to saves With Dragon 401, WotC introduced multiclass and hybrid rules for the classes introduced in Heroes of Shadow (among other books), which included multiclass and hybrid rules for the vampire. Hybrid rules were introduced in the PHB 3 and function more like 2e multiclassing rather than 3e multiclassing- a hybrid of a certain level counts as being that level in two classes, but you only get a fraction of the class features from each class. While 4e multiclassing is a dash of spice that can't really hurt you, hybrids range from characters whose features are too mutually opposed to unholy terrors whose reduced features complement each other superbly. The vampire falls into the former category since so many of the vampire's features that don't work well with other classes, such as the vampire's two total healing surges and their striker feature that only boosts the damage of vampire powers. The Vampirism multiclass feat stands as one of the more unusual ones since it essentially gives you three of the vampire's class features- Blood is Life, Enduring Soul and most of Child of Night (everything except Darkvision and some minor damage resistance, but that's not a big loss). This still manages to be less than a great deal because it also sets your surge count to 2 regardless of what your normal class would offer you, and unlike a level 1 vampire you don't even have any uses of blood drinker for surge generation, meaning your entire strategy for healing becomes "drink surges from your allies after battle". Unless you rarely take damage you're going to need to spend some more feats to shore up your surge problem (don't be a level 1 multiclass vampire, you don't have the feats for it). One possible feat is Blood Thirst, which lets you trade one of your encounter attack powers for a use of the blood drinker encounter power. Amusingly, the playtest version of this feat forgot that blood-drinker requires a vampire at-will power to use, which made it useless to most characters, but the final version lets you use it with any melee at-will power, thus making it actually viable. Of course, if you only have one use of blood drinker then you're still as vulnerable to things going south unexpectedly as a 1st level vampire, so you need to get more surges. The other set of feats introduced by the article were feats that offered benefits based on your other power sources. Each feat provided a different thematic ability, and more importantly granted you a healing surge once per encounter when you hit with an encounter attack power of that particular power source. Usually, you only qualify for one power source feat since you only have one multiclass slot (as someone who multiclassed vampire or a vampire who multiclassed another class), but hybrids can access two different power sources and there are a few classes out there who qualify as two sources (usually martial and something else). The exception to this is the bard, whose Multiclass Versatility feature lets them break the rules and have as many multiclass feats (and thus power sources) as they want. There are six feats (Arcane/Divine/Martial/Monastic/Primal/Psionic Vampire), but the trick is getting enough different encounter powers to trigger all six options, especially since Monastic vampire is limited to monks and psionic power points work differently than regular encounter powers. That said, the bard has a native series of powers that count as both arcane and primal encounter attack powers (letting them double dip), and can pick up one more encounter attack power through multiclassing and one more through theme. Themes are like paragon paths in that they're another source of options that mostly supplement your character options instead of replacing them (though some also offer alternate powers you can choose to take or leave instead of your class powers), only this time they take place during the first 10 levels (with Paragon Paths at levels 11-20 and Epic Destinies at levels 21-30). They're largely without any prerequisites (except for a few that might require you to be a particular race, class, or power source) so they can be added onto any existing character and represent things your character picked up by being a knight or explorer or noble or something. Some themes offer various encounter attack powers that have power sources and thus can be used to activate the vampire feats, so it's not a bad idea for a low-level vampire to multiclass, pick up a Vampire feat, and then use a theme to potentially generate one more surge per fight and survive until you get your second use of blood drinker at level 7. If you miss the attack you're out of luck because that encounter power is expended, but the benefits offered by the feats can still be worth it. Divine Vampire removes your Radiant Vulnerability and prevents you from taking damage in the sunlight while Martial Vampire provides a free bonus healing surge once per encounter when you're first bloodied- perfect for letting a healer patch you up without sabotaging your surge storage. A vampire with Noble Vampire and one of the multiclass Vampire feats can thus generate up to four surges per fight, while a bard might be able to generate even more thanks to multiclassing shenanigans, but at that point you've got enough surges to power your abilities, take a few unlucky hits and still heal up to full after the fight. If you really want to make an impression, then why not figure out a way to share your snacks with the rest of the class? The easiest option is the Shared Healing feat, which lets you or an ally foot the surge bill for a healing power and thus lets others draw on your bank of free surges, but it requires an epic cleric (or someone who multiclassed cleric) and is thus a little out of reach for most of the game. For your more lower-level needs there's always the Comrade's Succor ritual, which lets you and other party participants donate one or more surges to another person participating in the ritual. This is really nice to help with pacing when a party member gets too low on surge, but it does cost a surge just to use the ritual and cuts into your bloody gains. What's an easier solution? The Artificer is an arcane leader class introduced in the Eberron Player's Guide, a sort of magical researcher and tinkerer who uses arcane magic to power all sorts of wondrous devices. Unlike other leaders, the artificer has the ability to create healing infusions that provide healing and other effects without requiring the target to spend a healing surge; a healing infusion is replenished when an ally expends a healing surge during a short rest. Since a vampire only needs one extra healing surge, any past that can be donated to the artificer's infusion reserves as part of an aggressively mandatory blood drive. Better hope your vampire is a universal donor. With enough surge generation abilities a vampire can take a system designed to slowly deplete over the day and turn it into a system that regenerates every battle, effectively destroying healing surges as a pacing mechanism. Of course, even with a blood drive you probably can't take care of all of the damage your party will suffer, so you'll probably end up stopping for an extended rest eventually, even if it's only to refresh your daily powers. You may be able to feed the party several surges per fight, but if you're packing it in after four to six fights then how valuable are your surge-gathering skills compared to simply investing in being a defender with a hilariously high amount of surges per day who can use the same options to share with the party and refresh those surges each time you stop for a rest? If you really want to show what you can do, you have to do something that even the character with the highest surge count in the game can't do: never take an extended rest. There are a few classes out there which can be built without daily powers and with healing surges as their only pacing mechanism for the day, though most have one or more complications that won't play nice with vampire mechanics such as not having any use for the Charisma score that powers your regeneration, or not having any encounter powers with a level that can be swapped for blood drinker or encounter powers that hit to trigger feats such as Martial Vampire (especially those whose encounter powers are boosts that trigger on an at-will hit, which don't count for those purposes). Even if you can't build a good vampire out of a class without daily powers, you can still decide that your daily powers are a small price to pay in exchange for absolute power. The Eager Hero's Tattoo grants you temporary hit points after each short rest equal to 5 + the number of healing surges you've spent since your last extended rest (with higher level versions eventually offering 10 + 2x and 15 + 3x surges spent). This is a nice enough item on a beefy defender, because temporary hit points function as a sort of shield that gets depleted by damage instead of letting it touch your HP, and since it scales by your surges spent it will protect you from more damage each fight and thus allow you to stretch your surge reserves out through more fights than you normally could. While running out of surges will still stop a normal defender for the day, the amount of surges a vampire can use between extended rests can keep growing as long as you decide to keep going, and at its extreme means you can have more THP than HP and thus require enemies to damage you enough to kill you several times over before they can even scratch you. Should that not be enough for you there's also stuff you can do with milestones, which are a fixed event that players hit every two fights. Normally not a lot of things happen at a milestone outside of everyone getting an action point (which lets you take an extra action during an encounter, which is very nice), but there are some classes that get extra uses of abilities at a milestone and there are also some items that provide bonuses after a milestone. Meliorating Armor is a magic item which improves its enhancement bonus by +1 per milestone you reach, while there are rings that offer a similar property for your other defenses (specifically the Rings of Agile Thought/Enduring Earth/Unfettered Motion, which boost Will/Fortitude/Reflex, respectively), and the Imperishable Destiny feat lets humans (and half- or revenant humans) get a +1 to saves, skills and ability checks per milestone. These properties are balanced around the idea that an average party may see perhaps four milestones between extended rests if they're particularly badasses, but this blows the math out of the water and ensures that 10 milestones will make you basically untouchable by level-appropriate challenges. Of course, none of this boosts your offense, so you can't get too cocky or you'll fight foes who are just as unhittable, and none of this boosts your allies either so enemies can go chew on squishier targets... unless you're also the defender. The vampire is a creature of extremes, and the 4e vampire moreso. A normal vampire doomed to a squishy start and slow slide into obsolescence with nothing more than a novel healing minigame to pass away the time, while an abnormal vampire is the embodiment of everything it hates and if you're an insomniac revenant paladin vampire who inspires allies with your incandescence and gives blood freely then you'll only die when the DM bludgeons you with the Monster Manual.  Stay thirsty, my friends
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Mar 31, 2015 06:54
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A while back I brought up one unfortunate feature of 3e: Creatures take a -1 penalty to checks to spot something for every 10 feet of distance between them and the target, so a 120 million penalty to checks puts the moon out of sight of even the most skilled observers, let alone the sun or stars. Not so in Pathfinder. Of course, it's still a task beyond even level 20 characters, but things get a little different once mythic rules come into play. Mythic rules are kind of sort of Paizo's answers to the Epic rules of 3e and earlier editions which were there to solve the problem of what your band of adventurers has gained enough power that they can murder everything under the heavens, chiefly by providing them with enough power to murder everything within the heavens (as well as a host of possible targets). But while epic rules in D&D are designed as something you enter into after you've gone through the first 20 levels of play, Pathfinder's mythic rules are something that can be slotted in at any point in the campaign, existing under their own rules that provide various boosts to your capabilities that stack on top of the things provided by your class and the like. So you can have level 20 mythic characters, or level 1 ones, who will be stronger than an equally-leveled non-mythic character (well, in theory). Mythic creatures all have a number called its ranging from 1 to 10 (which is called the "mythic tier" for characters and "mythic rank" for monsters), which provides certain benefits such as feats, ability scores and common features for characters (monsters have different rules). Both possess mythic power, a wellspring of supernatural ability spent on anything from boosting your d20 rolls as part of the universal "surge" feature to activating various special abilities. Each mythic character chooses one of six "mythic paths" and gains a starting ability plus a path ability for each mythic tier, which can be chosen from the path or from a pool of common abilities. Mythic paths each focus on different things: Archmage is all about arcane magic, Champion is all about beating faces, Guardian is about being tough and defending allies, Hierophant is about divine magic, Marshal is about leading allies and Trickster is about being sneaky. You're not obligated to take any particular path, but some will probably be more useful to your character than others. With the basics covered, let's meet Elrond Hubble the (half-)elven astronomer. Since an early age Elrond has been intrigued by that strange blue blur overhead that brightens and darkens as the hours pass. Always seeking, Elrond possesses an elf's keen senses, and is eagle-eyed even by those standards to the point where Elrond can read a book from fifty feet away. Elrond refines his eyesight further with divine ability that emulates birds of prey, and focuses on this skill through training and items, but it's of no use. No matter how hard Elrond tries, he can't see anything more than a few hundred feet away. But one day Elrond encounters a strange meteorite and is exposed to its unusual energy. His body flooded with power, he turns his face to the heavens and for a brief moment... he can see! Now, what happened was that when Elrond was exposed to the power of the space rock, he ascended and gained his first mythic tier (a not entirely uncommon occurrence in the Pathfinder setting, at least three or four deities owe their starts to a magic rock). At 1st tier Elrond gains his basic features, a mythic path (Trickster, since we're trying to be a skill monkey), a path ability (he'll choose Unwavering Skill to be able to take 10 on all skill checks that are class skills, letting him steady his gaze), and a mythic feat slot, which he spends on the mythic version of the Eagle Eyes feat. Now, the Eagle Eyes feat normally lets you ignore the distance penalty to Perception up to -5 (the first 50 ft) and the mythic version lets you ignore up to -10 (the first 100 ft). But if you spend a point of mythic power as a swift action then for the next round the feat will eliminate all penalties to Perception due to distance. -120 million penalty to notice the moon? Gone. Distance to the sun? He might as well be standing on it. Neighboring stars? Sure. Hell, nothing can stop him from staring a few hundred septillion feet out to take a close look at the figurative or perhaps literal edge of the universe itself (or at least past its event horizon).... well, nothing save for having enough random solid junk in the way. This raises (and perhaps answers) a lot of cosmological questions that Elrond is probably ill-equipped to answer, all of which will soon be forgotten because Elrond's all-seeing gaze only lasts for a single round (about six seconds). Sure, he can spend a point of mythic power as a swift action on his next turn to do it again for another round, but mythic power is a daily resource and a mythic character only has 3 + 2x tier points of mythic power per day. You can spend a feat and up to three path ability slots to get more points, but even at tier 10 you'll only have 31 points per day. Even going all-out and investing in paths and abilities that provide mythic power substitutes will only take you up to 40 uses per day, a mere four minutes of star-gazing. You can recharge your pool of mythic power by slamming down some ambrosia but it's an expensive habit at 10k a dose (or 5k if you''ve got someone who can make it for you). At tier 10 all paths gain the ability to regain mythic power at the rate of one per hour in addition to the full refill they get once per day, but that's still not enough to feed Elrond's need for stars in his life. Of course, each mythic path has a unique special ability gained at tier 10 that represents being at the height of your power and ability and being able to smack around lesser beings. In the case of the trickster, the Supreme Trickster feature grants Elrond the ability is to treat all non-mythic creatures as flat-footed against any attack he makes against them, even if they're normally immune to being caught flat-footed. For an astronomer that's more of a novelty than anything. Additionally once per round Elrond can regain a point of mythic power whenever he rolls a natural 20 on an opposed skill check against a mythic foe . This ability is probably the most worthlessly marginal tier 10 ability in the game. Not only does it only kick in one in twenty attempts, but the number of opposed skills in the game can be counted on one hand (Perception vs. Disguise, Sleight of Hand and Stealth, Sense Motive vs. Bluff, and Linguistics vs... Linguistics), and rolling a natural 20 doesn't matter if there wasn't a mythic foe around to see you do it. This is highly unlikely to come up all that much. If it were "mythic creature" instead of "mythic foe" then you'd at least be able to top off by playing peek-a-boo with your mythic allies for a few minutes in hopes of randomly rolling 20s, but that still wouldn't be fast enough for Elrond's purposes. Compare the Trickster to the Champion, whose Legendary Champion ability lets you reroll attacks against non-mythic enemies and lets you regain a point of mythic power once per round whenever you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, regardless of the foe. It's not difficult for a combat-oriented character to be able to make a half-dozen attacks per round or more with the right fighting style or attack-generators (such as Attacks of Opportunity), each one with a 1 in 20 chance of generating a point of mythic power. At this point you might say to yourself, "well, even if other paths have better ways to generate mythic power, I still need to be a trickster in order to use the trickster's skill-boosting path abilities." Good news though: You really don't. The secret lies in the mythic feat called Dual Path, which does something really helpful: it lets you select one other mythic path, get the level 1 feature of that path and then whenever you would normally choose path abilities you could choose them from either path. Since it's a tier 1 feat and you get a feat slot at tier 1 then you can take it as your first feat to let you use the framework of your first path to house the abilities of your second, so you could have a Champion who dual paths into Trickster and then takes nothing but Trickster abilities but still winds up with the much nicer "Legendary Champion" ability. You don't even need to go that far, since most paths have enough interesting and versatile abilities that you won't mind mixing and matching to create the ultimate combination. Taking Dual Path as your first or second mythic feat is almost never a bad idea. Unfortunately, Champion is not going to work that well for Elrond since even if he does manage to find something he can shake a sword at while stargazing it doesn't return mythic power fast enough or reliably enough to meet his needs. But we have other options. We return now to Elrond Hubble, and finding him floating in space above the planet of Golarion. This isn't really as bad as it looks because with the right equipment he doesn't need air, or food or water and is immune to the vacuum of space. Thanks to his mythic abilities he doesn't require sleep, and won't ever die of old age either, giving him all the time in the world to study the wonders of space while a permanent telepathic bond links him up to the folks back on the ground. His eyewear has been enhanced to pierce storms and atmospheric conditions, and with the right mythic abilities he can even pierce illusions as well as invisibility and the ethereal but seeing clearly in the dark can prove to be a problem. Normally in Pathfinder the ability to see in the dark tends to cut off at certain distances- many races can only see up to 60 feet in magical darkness, but some like the deep-dwelling drow can see up to 120 feet in pitch blackness. Magical items that offer darkvision tend to also offer it in 60 foot distances or increments, but that's not really helpful at our scale. Fortunately, there's a really easy solution: the rod of shadows grants the magical ability to see perfectly in any sort of darkness, including magical darkness (the more complicated solution involves using mythic eldritch heritage and the robe of arcane heritage to worm your way into level 20 sorcerer abilities which you should otherwise not have access to). No distance limitations here. Elrond Hubble can see through anything at any distance that isn't a solid object (or maybe magical gas) and can do so for as long as he can keep his eyes open. Which is going to be a while, since he's also been permanently paralyzed. Maybe he had his Dexterity drained to 0 or maybe it was a lovetap from a lich, but the point is that our astronomer here can't move a muscle on his own, though he's still able to take mental actions such as telepathy, activating his mythic eagle eye, and making Perception checks. You might think that an immobile Elrond would have to start worrying about facing and field of vision, but don't worry, we've got that covered. Now, course correction might be a bit of a problem if we don't want him to be whacked by any space debris or something, so we've taken the liberty of giving him a dozen or so tiny flying constructs immune to the rigors of space to help him in any way necessary. Such as one of them attempting to tear his throat out every chance it gets. See, Elrond's path is the guardian, whose True Defender ability halves damage from non-mythic sources and also once per round lets him regain a point of mythic power whenever an enemy scores a critical hit against him. Since he's paralyzed, he's helpless and thus vulnerable to the coup de grace maneuver, which is an automatic hit and critical hit at that since he can't do anything to dodge it. Of course, a coup de grace still requires the victim to make a Fortitude save at a DC of 15 + damage dealt, and even if Elrond's Fortitude bonus is greater than the DC, rolling a natural 1 on the save still means that he automatically fails, which is a bit of a downer when the penalty for failing that save is instant death. Fortunately, Elrond's Guardian abilities also grant him epic damage reduction which the construct is unable to pierce, and when damage reduction completely negates damage then it also negates most of the other special effects that depend on damage, including the need to make a Fortitude save. So under the incessant onslaught of 0 damage critical hits from the murder-bot Elrond Hubble can keep his Mythic Eagle Eye feat going indefinitely, allowing him to gaze eternally into the endless void of space and telepathically send information to the folks back home. Fortunately, a combination of high level and significant resources invested in boosting Perception through boosting his Wisdom score have given Elrond Hubble a formidable Will save, to better endure the mental rigors and revelations of his work. One really obvious revelation encountered in this sort of thing is that you're not alone. True, it's not a huge secret that the neighboring planets are all inhabited, even if the inhabitants might be undead and/or permanently on fire but even once you get away from the local solar system or planets around other stars you're still going to find random things floating around in the cold dark infinite void, many of which can be filed under the "Horrors Man Was Never Meant To Know" category. Scholars tend to refer to this collection of aberrations as the Dark Tapestry, and its alien powers tend to involve ruin, madness and other bad things. Fortunately these dark dealers of devastation don't deign to discern our designated dwelling... But as we all know, When You Gaze Long Into The Abyss, The Abyss Also Gazes Into You (And Takes A -120 Trillion Penalty To Its Perception Checks In The Process). Still, accidents happen and occasionally you find yourself up to your navel in Things That Go Squish In The Night. Most aberrations are no match for a mythic hero, but should things go absolutely pear-shaped you might find yourself having to deal with the biggest powers in the Dark Tapestry. The Outer Gods are probably beyond anything mortals have to offer and rarely make their presence directly felt, but their greatest servants are the Great Old Ones, who possess strength that rivals that of demigods and demon lords. This is the mightiest of their heralds, whose coming is generally seen as a sign that things have gone horribly wrong and are about to get worse.  You might have heard of him. Good News: He's usually imprisoned in his tomb within the sunken city of R'lyeh, slumbering away in stasis thanks to the power of the Elder Sign. Bad News: Occasionally the stars align, R'lyeh rises, the doors open and he walks once more. Good News: R'lyeh is on a planet countless lightyears away (it's literally on Earth. The local year is somewhere around 1918 and there's an adventure path module where you go to Earth at that time and stuff Rasputin back into his grave) Bad News: He's also capable of spaceflight and can reach your world in 2d6 days (or possibly more). Because that is a thing this game needed. Now we could panic, hug our loved ones and prepare ourselves for the end of days, but with Elrond watching the stars we've got at least a two day warning period before the squid hits the planet. So let's get some friends together and get ready to hold the line. Meet Aegis. Aegis is a half-elven paladin who is also a mythic tier 10 champion. Aegis is specifically a Divine Hunter, a paladin subtype that favors bows. Aegis likes bows, Aegis has a nice bow. It starts as a +5 composite longbow with the aberration bane property to increase its bonuses even further against aberrations like the Big C, while the phase-locking prevents our squishy friend from using any sort of teleportation or plane-shifting magic to close the gap or escape, the endless ammunition property does exactly what is says on the label, and the adaptive property lets us add any strength bonus we may have to the damage of arrows fired from the bow. Again, pretty nice. Interesting fact about Aegis: One of Aegis' ancestors was an orc. It was probably on the human side since humans will romance anything, but you never know with magic. By tapping into that eldritch heritage, Aegis gains some of that orcish power. By getting the mythic feat, Aegis gains all the bloodline powers of an orc blood sorcerer of a level equal to Aegis's level (20) minus two, so 18 normally. By donning a robe of arcane heritage, Aegis' effective sorcerer level is increased by 4, giving Aegis the bloodline power of a 22nd level sorcerer (or a 24th level sorcerer for the first ability thanks to the mythic feat). There are some nice things in there, and Aegis is pretty happy about her heritage because Aegis is optimistic like that, to the point where morale bonuses linger for an additional 1d4 rounds after they'd normally stop because Aegis doesn't let things like the rules get her down. Aegis has some friends. There's Elrond Hubble, of course, since we couldn't do this without him. There's also Old One Eye, a level 20 mythic Ranger who is a champion with a dual path into Marshal. Old One Eye really, really hates aberrations ("drat varmits killed my pa") and has devoted everything to learning how to destroy them. There's also Levity, a bard who may or may not be mythic (but is at least level 17) and Dr. J, a high-level non-mythic alchemist. No one knows why Dr. J is here. Maybe he's a cohort or something. The A-Team may be assembled, but there's one minor problem: only Elrond Hubble can see what's coming. The rest of them are affected by the paltry limits of mortal sight. There are spells that let you share sensory information, but those are usually limited to things like a wizard and a familiar. Now, Elrond could explain that their guest is currently fifty thousand light-years out and slightly to the left or even provide a more exact position by taking a level of Gunslinger to access the gunner squire archetype, but that might not be enough for our purposes. So Doctor J pulls out three vials and offers a solution. Aegis, seeing no problem with this, immediately chugs one down and has an out-of-body experience. As an alchemist, Dr. J can prepare various extracts containing arcane spells and with the infusion ability they can be used by other non-alchemist characters, allowing for a useful bypass to access some caster spells that would otherwise need a custom magic item to use. The spell in question is Marionette Possession, which lets the caster shoot their soul out and into the body of a willing (or unconscious...) creature nearby. In our case, it really doesn't matter where Aegis goes, so we'll just park her in Old One Eye's body for the moment. Elrond Hubble (either freed of paralysis or maybe just hooked up to an IV) then consumes another vial of Marionette Possession and jumps into the now vacant body of Aegis. Not to be outdone, Aegis drinks a vial of Marionette Possession while in Old One Eye's body and thus comes into possession of her own body while Elrond Hubble's soul is still in it. So... what was the point of all this? Well, possessing a target lets you use the target's physical abilities and your own mental abilities, but the target still can use its own senses and both souls can share information telepathically. We want Aegis' body with Elrond's senses, so by shuffling her out of her own body we can let Elrond take temporary ownership of the body, and then be pushed back down into the radar role when Aegis returns. Since they're both half-elves they both have the same Keen Senses trait, allowing Elrond's supreme vision to function normally even in Aegis' body (his gear has also been transferred over) in a really convoluted plot to allow two characters to share exact information. But again... why? A brief primer on ranged combat: All ranged weapons have what is called a range increment, and when you make an attack against a distant target you take a cumulative -2 penalty to attack rolls for each ranged increment past the first, but that penalty can be reduced to a -1 penalty per increment with the far shot feat. Ranged increments tend to be in the 50 to 100-odd foot range for missile weapons such as bows and crossbows or the 10 to 30 foot range for thrown weapons and those increments can be increased by doing things like doubling them with the distance property. Mythic heroes can take the mythic version of the far shot feat which lets them spend a point of mythic power as a swift action to ignore all ranged increment penalties for one turn, but there's still a maximum range cap of ten ranged increments on missile weapons and five ranged increments for thrown weapons. Fortunately for us, the mythic champion has the an ability that not only multiplies your ranged increments by five but also removes the increment cap. It's well and good to be able to shoot at an unlimited range, but you probably need to be able to see where you're aiming since being off by even a fraction of a degree means being off-target by billions of miles. Aegis could have the same mythic eagle eye set-up that Elrond has, but that comes with a problem since both eagle eye and far shot require you to spend a swift action to activate them, both last only one round, and you only get one swift action per round, which is an even bigger bottleneck for mythic characters than usual since so many of their abilities are swift action abilities that also compete with their regular swift action abilities. If the DM won't let you use a really big grid for accurate coordinates then you need some way to keep both in action. By getting her soul out of her body, Aegis lets Elrond possess it and treat it as his own, letting her jump back in on top of him so she can have all the physical benefits of her body and her own swift action while also letting him spend a swift action of his own to use his enhanced senses (all of which he can use through her body since both are half elves with the Keen Senses feature and she has identical copies of all of his magic items) and share it with her. It's a wonky way to get around the swift action block that normally limits sight/range- the alternative involves finding a really good spotter. For a little while Aegis is going to be the target of some boring spells that boost her attack and damage rolls. Aegis taps into her orcish heritage to grow in size, becoming bigger and stronger, and drinks a potion of gravity bow to make her arrows hit as though they were from an even bigger bow. She activates her Divine Bond ability and boosts the power of her bow even further, giving it the aximoatic and holy properties to boost its damage against chaotic and evil opponents, plus the seeking ability offered through her Divine Hunter feature, which lets her shots ignore miss chances other than the 1d20 attack roll (she could also add the distance property, but that's not really needed at the moment). Levity the bard fires up Inspire Courage and casts haste at some point. Old One Eye spends a point of mythic power as a free action to activate endless hatred and really hate aberrations (boosting the bonus even further), and then activates the Marshal's mythic bond ability to share that entire bonus with Aegis and the rest of the group for the next couple of rounds. Finally, Aegis does two things: First she spends a swift action to activate Smite Evil, allowing her to choose one evil target in sight, adding her Charisma modifier to her attack rolls against the target and her AC against the target's attacks, plus add her paladin level to damage rolls against the target and then spends a standard action to use her orc bloodline's touch of rage ability, letting her add half of her effective sorcerer level as a morale bonus to her attack rolls and damage rolls (and will saves) for one round. Since it's a standard action it would normally be harder to attack, but her optimism trait lets morale bonuses linger for the next 1d4 rounds (and even if she didn't have it we could always have a different mythic character such as the under-used Levity use it on her, or have her spend a point of mythic power to get an extra standard action for the round and then use it). Next round, it's showtime. First Aegis spends a point of mythic power as a minor action to activate Mythic Far Shot and ignore the range increment penalty. Then she activates deadly aim to take a -6 penalty to hit in exchange for a +12 damage bonus (+18 with the mythic feat). Then she shoots. With her enlarged arrows dealing 3d6 base damage plus her various strength bonuses (+6 inherent from her bloodline, +6 from her belt, +6 from bloodline size boost power), even an average strength of 12 can be turned into a mighty strength score of 30. So how much damage does she do? 3d6 base + 10 strength +18 deadly aim + 20 smite evil + 5 enhancement (+2 bane) +3 luck +2 sacred +12 morale +4 competence +12 favored enemy +2d6 bane +2d6 holy +2d6 axiomatic= 119 average damage per shot (96 minimum) 100+ damage per shot is no chump change, and the big thing about bows is that it's not too hard to simply spam arrows at your enemies. As a level 20 paladin she already has four attacks, and taking the precision ability three times means all her attacks are at full accuracy. Archers can take the rapid shot and manyshot feats to fire two more arrows per round, with the mythic versions adding two more arrows on top of that, plus another attack from the haste spell for a total of nine shots per round. Accuracy-wise most of her damage bonuses also provide a similar bonus to accuracy, pushing her into the mid-50s to hit against a target number of AC 49, so only a natural 1 can save her prey. But with a mythic champion... not even that. Our target's non-Euclidean nature means that all attacks against him have a 50% miss chance, but the seeking property on her bow completely negates that. Her attacks bypass his damage reduction thanks to smite evil (and also being made of stuff that bypass his DR), and they also shut down his healing ability on contact. So he eats nine arrows and dies immediately, the only point in rolling a d20 is to see if you can roll critical hits and kill him even faster. Of course, he'll resurrect himself 2d6 rounds later and stagger around in a cloud of fog wondering what in the name of himself just happened, but that just means he eats another nine arrows which will stuff him back into R'lyeh until the next time he wakes up. End Result? You can noscope the Big C from the other end of the galaxy. In fact, you can serve up calamari fritters from the other end of the universe, provided there aren't a bunch of stars and planets blocking your way. If there are, well... there are ways around that one too. With all the MP flying around you might worry about sustainability. Elrond Hubble can keep things going indefinitely through 0 dmg critical hits but only when paralyzed. Fortunately, the Guardian is only the second easiest method of generating MP. The true power is in the hierophant, which only requires that you take 20 points of damage in a round, which adventurers do all the time. Since it doesn't require a particular source self-inflicted injuries are perfectly fine. Self-flagellate or better yet self-immolate: a wall of fire does 2d6 + caster level points of damage to any creature passing through it (or sitting in it), making it easy to get a fairly predictable amount of damage per round. You're still shedding HP each round, but there's nothing stopping you from fixing that. Healing 30+ points of damage a round will keep you ahead of the curve, and a tier 10 hierophant gets maximum healing from any source, almost as if they wanted this to happen. Two of the hierophant's starting abilities let them spend a point of MP to cast one of their spells, so a mass cure or mass heal spell can undo five to twelve rounds of damage for one round's worth of MP generation, provided you're fine with keeping an active eye on people. Now, you might argue that an intergalactic arrow barrage is kind of not really in the spirit of things and you'd be totally right- Lovecraftian problems deserve Lovecraftian solutions. The basic change is that Aegis is going to ditch all the archery feats and then she's gonna devote all her resources to getting ripped. An 18 base is the highest you can start with, then add a +2 racial bonus and the +6 inherent bonus from orcish ancestry, then put every ability bonus you get from 20 levels (5 points) and 10 mythic tiers (10 points) into strength and then the best magical strength-boosting belt money can buy. But it's not enough. Levity is switched over from a bard to a skald, a bardic variant with the ability to let allies rage like a barbarian, granting a +6 morale bonus to strength at higher levels, but it's still not enough. Our friendly neighborhood alchemist offers up an alchemical grand mutagen to boost her strength even farther. Unfortunately if a non-alchemist drinks an alchemist's mutagen, the character gains no benefit other than an upset stomach, but all we have to do to avoid that is have Aegis take one level of Alchemist instead of one of her paladin levels because this is in no way a bad idea (it helps that the 20th level of paladin has some actual detriments to it). With the right paladin spell, Aegis can draw on sacred celestial strength for a few minutes to boost her abilities again, but even that's not enough. In Pathfinder, the best way to get huge is to actually get Huge. Turning into other, bigger things usually grants a size bonus to your strength score. Now, we could use another alchemical infusion to turn into a huge monstrous humanoid, but we can do better than that. A druid's wild shape ability lets it turn into an increasing variety of animals, plants, and even elementals, including Huge ones at higher levels. The powerful shape feat makes you an especially bulky version of your chosen form, while the mythic version makes you even bigger, so you can turn into a Gargantuan earth elemental instead of just a Huge one for an impressive +16 to strength. This becomes even more relevant when you realize that a mythic druid can share this ability through the pack wild shape ability. While it may divide the duration, a druid can use it for hours at most levels and at-will at 20th level, thus letting the entire party wander around as burly balls of earth. Putting this all together and Aegis is surprisingly ripped. 18 base + 2 racial + 6 inherent + 10 mythic + 5 level + 6 enhancement + 6 morale + 8 alchemical + 4 sacred + 16 size = 81 So, what does that mean? Well, it's a +35 bonus to things that depend on strength like certain attack and damage rolls, including the damage rolls of thrown weapons. Now, thrown weapons are still the loser cousins of the ranged weapon family, and can't get nearly the amount of projectiles in the air as arrows can. But there's more than one way to win by volume. By taking the mighty hurler ability three times, Aegis can chuck objects up to her size. Of course, such objects would be unwieldy as hell unless she takes the two-handed thrower feat to let her throw them as normal. So how big would they be? Carrying capacity is based on a table that provides a given amount for basic strength scores and then doubles every five points above that (which is 4x for every 10 points). As a stock medium humanoid with 81 strength, Aegis can lift 153*4^6 lbs of stuff as a light load, which is 300 tons ("short tons" of the 2,000 lbs variety as opposed to the 2,240 lb "long ton") and change, and can lift triple that as a light load. But since she's in the form of a Gargantuan earth elemental, her carrying capacity is 8x that of a human, putting her at around 2,500 tons as a light load. But we're not done here. Muleback cords add 8 to your strength for the purpose of carrying capacity while a heavyload belt triples it, and as a mythic character Aegis can take the Display of Strength universal ability to boost her strength by 20 for the purpose of carrying capacity and boost it further with the mule's strength ability, which boosts your carrying strength by 5 each time you take it. Even without Mule's Strength, that puts her at an effective strength of 109 and thus a capacity of over 366,000 tons. If our druid friend spends another point of MP, Aegis can also gain the benefits of the regular Powerful Shape feat, counting as a colossal creature for the purpose of lifting and size-based attacks, doubling her capacity again to over 732,000 tons, while taking Mule's Strength just once would boost it to 1.46 million tons With that kind of strength she'll have no problems using the weapon group that's had the best track record against the Great Old Ones:  Boats This is the Seawise Giant (among other names), a supertanker longer than the Empire State Building is tall and at 724,000 tons fully laden is the heaviest ship mankind has ever made. With Mule's Strength Aegis could dual-wield it. By activating her Bonded Weapon ability she can turn it into a +5 seeking supertanker, with her hurling vengeance ability granting it the throwing and returning property. So how much damage does it do? Back in 3e, the Hulking Hurler calculated damage by doing up to 5d6 for the first 400 lbs of an object's weight, plus 1d6 per 200 lbs after that (so about 10d6 per ton), which would require Aegis to roll around 7.24 million d6s for damage, enough to kill our target and thirty thousand of his closest friends. Unfortunately, that rule doesn't exist in Pathfinder for obvious reasons. The universal rules for throwing rocks (or other big large things) put it at twice the slam damage for a creature of its size, or about 4d8 total for a colossal creature. But Aegis can throw an object two size categories larger than a normal hurler of her size, which upscales it to 8d8. Sadly, this is the same number no matter if we're throwing two hundred tons or two hundred thousand tons. Adding it to many of our old bonuses and the 1.5x strength bonus from two-handed thrower gives us: 8d8 (36 average) +52 strength +19 smite evil + 5 enhancement + 11 morale + 18 deadly aim + 3 luck +2 sacred +12 favored enemy = 158 average A little better than our average damage per arrow, even if we don't benefit from things like the Bane, Holy, and Axiomatic properties that Aegis could put on her old bow. Now, we could spend an MP using hurling vengeance to teleport it back into our hands with every attack, allowing us to make a full attack and take advantage of things like haste and mythic rapid shot, but boomeranging a supertanker across the galaxy five to seven times a round just doesn't have quite the right style to it. I want to settle this decisively with one big attack. A single big attack is rare in Pathfinder outside of some lance charges because no matter how hard you can swing your weapon you're still better off making that same attack four or more times a round as part of a full attack, which has the side effect of reducing mobility since most combatants would rather stand in one place and keep swinging rather than forfeit most of their damage by moving their speed (unless they have the ability to move and full attack in the same turn with pounce). In an effort to fix this, Paizo created the Vital Strike chain of feats, culminating in Greater Vital Strike, which let you make a bigger attack as a standard action. Vital Strike multiplies your damage, but only the weapon's damage dice and not any of the other dice or modifiers. For most characters three feats for a couple of extra dice of damage is a pretty lousy trade unless you're only making one attack per round that uses a bucket of dice to begin with, such as a T-Rex's solitary bite attack. Since we're making a single attack with a bunch of dice it also works for our purposes. Throwing Greater Vital Strike onto our supertanker attack gets us up to 32d8 plus the previous modifiers, giving us another 108 average damage and pushing it to 266 with one attack. Still not enough. Even at maximum damage it's not enough. But while Vital Strike only multiplies your damage dice, but Mythic Vital Strike multiplies everything that would be multiplied on a critical hit, including our large strength bonus and other static modifiers. It still doesn't multiply extra dice from things like the holy or axiomatic properties, which is why I didn't bother with acquiring them for our +5 seeking supertanker. With Mythic Vital Strike our we quadruple our original damage, putting us at 632 damage on average... which is still not enough. Another 40 to 60 points of static modifiers multiplied through Mythic Vital Strike would be enough to seal the deal, but I've used up most of my big ones and I don't really want to nickle and dime my way through the SRD. Now, Aegis could just spend a point of MP to bring her supertanker back to her hand and another MP to activate amazing initiative, granting her a bonus standard action she can use to repeat the attack for maximum overkill, but it's still making two big attacks when I only want to make one. A critical hit would do double damage, or triple with Mythic Improved Critical (supertanker), but relying on random chance just isn't my thing. We want a silver bullet. And we have one. The named bullet spell works with bullets, arrows, and even thrown weapons like our +5 seeking supertanker, and it's on the spell lists of both Elrond Hubble and Old One Eye. Now using it properly does require that we beat our target's spell resistance (a formidable 41) to affect it, but we're mythic, we have various feats and items to let us bypass it effortlessly. Effect? A successful attack (which we can automatically make) does some extra damage we don't care about and becomes an automatic critical threat which we can effortlessly confirm into a triple damage critical hit. Vital Strike isn't multiplied by a critical hit, but they do add together, so our Vital Strike (+300% damage) adds to our 3x critical (+200%) damage for a total of 6x (+500%) our base damage, taking us from 158 damage to 948 damage (968 after the spell's bonus damage), deep-sixing our target with room to spare. When the Sleeper of R'lyeh wakes then the end will be nigh, because Aegis sees all and we have a boat with his name on it.   Toot toot motherfucker LightWarden fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Dec 3, 2015 |
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Nov 28, 2015 00:06
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Nope, it only sees through illusions and magical deceptions as if using true seeing, it doesn't grant true seeing itself, and non-Euclidean isn't an illusion effect, it's a spacial effect (blocking things like blindsight). Even if it did count as an illusion, mythic senses doesn't pierce the illusions of mythic creatures, which includes our non-Euclidean friend (We don't need his exact position, just the general location of his square- the seeking effect does the rest). It's one of the odder quirks of universal mythic abilities. Example: Pure Body blocks non-mythic diseases and poisons, but not ones from mythic sources, while stuff like a bargain bin 7,500 gp periapt of health blocks all diseases, which thus includes mythic ones unless the disease specifically mentions bypassing normal immunity. Thus these abilities are usually a terrible investment, because anything that will challenge you will probably be mythic and get through your immunity, while non-mythic sources remain just as useful as they were when you were a mortal.
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Nov 28, 2015 04:16
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Iny posted:
Tell your artist friend that I appreciate this; I haven't really ever received fan-art before.  Also, I had to go back and edit my effortpost because I realized that I actually forgot a paragraph about exactly why I did the whole soul shuffle thing with those infusions of marionette possession. The problem is that both mythic eagle-eye (for unlimited sight range) and mythic far shot (for no penalty on ranged attacks) require a swift action to activate and only last for one round, which means you'd have a hard time using them since you only get one swift action per round and it's very difficult to get more. Now, technically Aegis doesn't really need to see her target, since she can blindfire at any particular square in the universe and let the seeking property do the rest, but the DM not let Elrond get away with simply giving Aegis targeting coordinates on a grid that's a few septillion squares by a few septillion squares. The key with marionette possession is that the invader uses the physical capabilities of the host's body, while the host is still capable of using their own senses and mentally communicating with the invader. By jumping out of her body with marionette possession, Aegis opens it up for Elrond to possess it and technically treat it as his, then she can use the spell again to jump back into her own body in order to use her physical capabilities while Elrond is stuck inside able to share her senses. Since they're both half-elves he can use his Eagle-Eyed feat through her eyes since he's still able to use his senses and she also has the same sight-boosting magic items he has, so his visibility is unchanged. This means that he can spend a swift action to use their shared senses and find the target, while she can a swift action to activate Far Shot and shoot the target in the same turn. Otherwise you have to argue about if spotter provides an accurate enough targeting position for this purpose. The swift action bottleneck is pretty nasty in Pathfinder because it's one of the most common ways of activating class features and mythic just slaps a second layer of stuff all fighting for that same slot. Unlike 4e, there aren't really any ways to trade down actions in order to get more swift actions for your boosts. Normally you have to activate things in order of longest duration first and work your way down until you're all squared up, but if they're one-round duration then you can't have them up at the same time unless you figure out a way to outsource them to other creatures (such as your familiar). But by engaging in a little bit of repossession you can have one character do your thinking while the other one acts and claw your way through the limitations of the game.
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Dec 3, 2015 18:49
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