The Gaming Den

I suppose some of them might be decent if you don't have anything better to do.

After a quick read, I would challenge that. 20 ranks in linguistics gives you the legendary ability "reading really fast". 20 ranks in stealth give you nothing the Ninja cannot get at lvl 11. This looks really terrible, all the way.

Considering Paizo's track record thus far, that's not really a surprise.

20 Ranks: Whenever you attempt a caster level check, attempt a Spellcraft check at a –20 penalty at the same DC. If the spellcraft check succeeds, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus on your caster level check.

Is this as fucking stupid as I think it is?

Gnorman wrote:

20 Ranks: Whenever you attempt a caster level check, attempt a Spellcraft check at a –20 penalty at the same DC. If the spellcraft check succeeds, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus on your caster level check.

Is this as fucking stupid as I think it is?

Why make one check, when you could make two and waste twice the time...

Pathfinder: bogging down gameplay with fiddly circumstantial bonuses since 2009.

sandmann wrote:

Gnorman wrote:

20 Ranks: Whenever you attempt a caster level check, attempt a Spellcraft check at a –20 penalty at the same DC. If the spellcraft check succeeds, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus on your caster level check.

Is this as fucking stupid as I think it is?

Why make one check, when you could make two and waste twice the time...

Even if they were being cautious, shouldn't be -10 for +2 (also Rank 10)? -20 for a measly +2?
It should be +10 at that penalty/rank.

Honestly they'd have been better off just putting these as benefits into the skill system. Not that anyone would care and it'd still be more fiddly shit to track, but still.

Since talking about how Summon Monster went from a situational (if usually underpowered) stupid pet trick to a room-clearing encounter crusher is the latest hotness, let's talk a bit more about this Familiar Archetype. Specifically, this particular ability:

Greater—Summoned Shell (Sp)

Whenever the familiar's master casts a summon monster spell, if the familiar is within the spell's range, it can choose to inhabit the body of one creature summoned by the spell. While inhabiting the body, the familiar maintains its own Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores and its familiar powers, but otherwise gains the statistics and abilities of the summoned creature.

When the spell ends, or the summoned creature's hit points are reduced to 0, the familiar is expelled without suffering any negative effects.

First of all, we should note that the second-to-last sentence is really fucking ambiguous. Do they mean 'gain' or 'replace'? If a familiar has a feat that the summon monster does not have, do they keep it? And what exactly qualifies as a familiar power? Its BAB? Its hit points? Toss me a frickin' bone here, people.

The upshot is that if a DM rules permissively, this ability is really ripe for abuse. If you have a familiar with, say, the celestial template, a couple of good feats, and full-BAB (which is easy enough to get with the Improved Familiar feat and a certain wizard archetype) you can really beef up the effect of some of your summons. And of course there's still the Duplicate Familiar spell if you want more goodness.

The downside is that if a DM rules extremely strictly... this ability is still really ripe for abuse. Because you can cast long-lasting spells on your familiar before they use that ability and you can super-buff up your summons. It doesn't combo as well with Duplicate Familiar, sadly, but when you can slap a Contingency'd Beast Shaped Leopard/Tiger/Dire Tiger onto a former Celestial Ankylosaurus to dish out five attacks at 1d8+30 at level 11, who gives a fuck, right?

Wait, is talking about how Summon Monster is better the latest hotness? Heck, is it a room-clearing encounter crusher? I thought it required a decent feat investment to not suck in combat?

Random hypothetical question. I read the Unchained variant rule about how to resolve multiple hits (basically, you deal half damage if you miss by 5 or less and get 1 extra hit for every 5 you beat the AC up to your maximum). Still takes a full round action to do a full attack.

Let's say I run a game and house-rule it so you just do that every time you attack with a standard action. Other than having to tweak a few abilities and buffs and Vital Strike becoming even more irrelevant, what would the effects be?

EDIT: Would this work in the say that I'm thinking (give warriors a buff), or will it just buff spellcasters more than warriors?

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Random hypothetical question. I read the Unchained variant rule about how to resolve multiple hits (basically, you deal half damage if you miss by 5 or less and get 1 extra hit for every 5 you beat the AC up to your maximum). Still takes a full round action to do a full attack.

Let's say I run a game and house-rule it so you just do that every time you attack with a standard action. Other than having to tweak a few abilities and buffs and Vital Strike becoming even more irrelevant, what would the effects be?

EDIT: Would this work in the say that I'm thinking (give warriors a buff), or will it just buff spellcasters more than warriors?

Most notable thing I can remember about that variant is that it makes haste effectively useless (since haste just raises the cap on number of attacks you can gain instead of giving you a free attack. So with BAB+16, to get your hasted attack you have to beat the enemy's AC by 20). The variant also hugely devalues crit threat range (because the way crits are handled you have a max of 2 crits per round).

I'm really not sure what using that variant adds that just letting characters full attack while moving doesn't accomplish but better.

Seerow wrote:
Most notable thing I can remember about that variant is that it makes haste effectively useless (since haste just raises the cap on number of attacks you can gain instead of giving you a free attack...

Yikes, I assumed it worked like two weapon fighting in that it just fave you an extra hit if you hit once. Alright, let's just say that it just gives you an extra hit then if you hit at least once.

EDIT AFTER UNFUCKING QUOTE TAGS: I suppose I could just allow all attacks on a full attack. Just considering a rule that reduced die rolls a bit, but I'm thinking just allowing characters to do all their attacks on an attack action would be the simplest.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:

Seerow wrote:
Most notable thing I can remember about that variant is that it makes haste effectively useless (since haste just raises the cap on number of attacks you can gain instead of giving you a free attack...

Yikes, I assumed it worked like two weapon fighting in that it just fave you an extra hit if you hit once. Alright, let's just say that it just gives you an extra hit then if you hit at least once.

EDIT AFTER UNFUCKING QUOTE TAGS: I suppose I could just allow all attacks on a full attack. Just considering a rule that reduced die rolls a bit, but I'm thinking just allowing characters to do all their attacks on an attack action would be the simplest.

Keep in mind that this makes some monsters scary as hell. Closet trolls (like the troll) will start functioning in much larger spaces, making the likelihood of being slaughtered by them significantly greater in any setting other than a flat open plane.

So, I had a look at the War Priest, and the casting didn't surprise me: Paizo really want everyone to take a "six spell levels" casting style. They'd prefer you didn't take "nine levels" (but it's too late to change that, so they'll just try to distract you with newer options), and everyone laughs at you if you take less.

Anyway, the weapon damage thing is... weird. Deities who offer the favoured weapon of an Ice Pick, a Kukri (no, Firefox, not Kubrick), the shuriken or the whip are now pumping their fists in the air, because they get real damage added to the special qualities of the weapon (Light x4 crit, Light 18-20 crit, cheap thrown weapon, 15' tripping disarming). Deities who favour big swords, axes and hammers (for instance, most gods of war) feel sad, because the class feature does absolutely nothing until they hit the right level.

It's just weird, and looks like a big oversight, which also doesn't surprise me.

They announced another Bestiary tonight. As well as Ultimate Intrigue, a skills hardback. Including the Vigilante base class.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:

Seerow wrote:
Most notable thing I can remember about that variant is that it makes haste effectively useless (since haste just raises the cap on number of attacks you can gain instead of giving you a free attack...

Yikes, I assumed it worked like two weapon fighting in that it just fave you an extra hit if you hit once. Alright, let's just say that it just gives you an extra hit then if you hit at least once.

EDIT AFTER UNFUCKING QUOTE TAGS: I suppose I could just allow all attacks on a full attack. Just considering a rule that reduced die rolls a bit, but I'm thinking just allowing characters to do all their attacks on an attack action would be the simplest.

The Pathfinder Unchained one-roll attack routine is basically gibberish. It doesn't really interact properly with stuff like Two Weapon Fighting or Rapid Fire, it screws people who prioritize damage bonuses over to-hit bonuses (like sneak and power attackers), it completely fucks anyone who tries to defend themselves with armor class, and it makes rending beasts like the Girallon into inescapable death blenders.

If that sounds like it pretty much takes every viable weapon-based character to the woodshed for punishment beatings... you're almost right. I think the San Diego Supercharger doesn't much care. But the shield fighter, the archer fighter, and the ninja all cry tiny tears.

It wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to make a new edition where people rolled one attack roll on their turn like 4th edition D&D. But you do have to rewrite all the warrior archetypes around that premise. Like the Tome of Battle, and not at all like Pathfinder Unchained.

-Username17

Well that's lame. Ah well, rather see people saying mean things about my ideas (on the internet) then pissing off my theoretical players should I ever find a group again.

I have now been able to read through quite a bit of "Pathfinder Unchained" and it is probably worth more of our time discussing than what it has been given thus far. Not because it is good, but because there is a vertible storm of "bad","unfinished", "who gives a fuck", and "incompatible" rules in there and each one could generate the page or two of discussion that we have seen on the topics that have already been reviewed.

Personally; I think its fucking amazing that they bothered to spend page space on a rules system for "wound penalties" for losing hit points. They even discuss how these rules will fuck up the basic assumptions of D&D combat, and the rules are the SAME BULLSHIT that people have been printing for 15 fucking years where you divide your hit points by 4 and get penalties if you are below 3/4, below 1/2 etc.

Considering that "Death" is basically just a status condition in D&D why wouldn't you just write some rules for a "wounded" status condition that could be as theatrical or gritty as wanted.

souran wrote:Considering that "Death" is basically just a status condition in D&D why wouldn't you just write some rules for a "wounded" status condition that could be as theatrical or gritty as wanted.

Not very familiar with 4e but isn't that what "blooded" was?

Not exactly, "bloodied" is a state that does not impair your axtions, but makes other actions more effective if used on you. Some attack powers do more damage to bloodied opponents and some healing powers heal more or have rider effects.

If I recall right, some class features on a class or two in 4E made you better when bloodied (more damage, etc).
In some ways it was genius. Being damaged meant things like being hurt more or you dishing our more.
PF went down the Saga way with condition track that routes just through damage.

This may have been discussed before but I missed it and I don't feel like sifting through the thread for it, but how do the unchained classes compare side to side with the regular classes? There is a lot of information to go through and lately I haven't had the time to do it myself.

I don't know how it compares to the original, but it seems that the Unchained barbarian at least has less bookkeeping with fewer 1/rage powers.

Unchained Summoner is a straight nerf. The spell list has been stripped down with many spells removed, and the spells they got early now appear at the same spell levels as their sources. Eidolons have less flexibility (pick one of these prepackaged options for half your base evolution points).

Unchained Rogue is a straight buff. They get free weapon finesse at level 1, dex to damage starting at level 3, and starting at level 4 when they hit someone with sneak attack they get a choice of some handy debuffs. Rogue talents still suck and the list has been trimmed down, the only important losses being that terrain mastery was nerfed to prevent a build which stacked up favored terrain bonuses to the heavens, and no access to ninja tricks at all.

Unchained Monk trades a good will save for full BAB, flurry loses the TWF attack penalty, it gets a slightly more flexible list of odd abilities as ki powers from L4 (semi-qinggong), and gets some neat tricks to use with unarmed attacks from L5. It's incompatible with any interesting standard monk archetype though.

Unchained Barbarian I'm neither particularly interested nor familiar with. It looks at a glance like their bonuses are all untyped rather than morale bonuses, and they get temp HP instead of increased Con.

Orca wrote: Unchained Monk trades a good will save for full BAB, flurry loses the TWF attack penalty, it gets a slightly more flexible list of odd abilities as ki powers from L4 (semi-qinggong), and gets some neat tricks to use with unarmed attacks from L5. It's incompatible with any interesting standard monk archetype though.

The new FOB also lets you make actual 2-handed attacks. And Monks are now natively proficient with several reach weapons.Ki powers are a grab bag of meh, except Empty Body, because having your GM shit himself with rage over your 4th level character turning ethereal is hilarious.

Yeah, Empty Body really is the outlier there. Everything else qualifies as a nifty-but-limited trick,a combat bonus, or a stylish-but-impractical ability, and there you have a solve-the-dungeon ability at level 4 (that doubles as an escape clause, an ambush tool, and a plot breaker in a pinch.)