Pathfinder: the Lowdown

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:09 pm

PhoneLobster wrote: Er. That only works if the stats are lower when playing "Low Fantasy" and higher when playing epic or whatever.

Not necessairly. Maybe "low fantasy" character fight one tiger and "epic" characters fight 1,000 tigers. Or whatever.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:23 pm

Pathfinder wrote:Damaging Magic Weapons: An attacker cannot damage a magic weapon that has an enhancement bonus unless his weapon has at least as high an enhancement bonus as the weapon struck.

Quite the change for those who ever run into the situation.

They also cleaned up the item creation rules such that you can no longer make a spell-trigger or spell-completion item without knowing the spell.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:58 pm

They very, very, very slightly nerfed the Gate spell; now you can't control a creature with 2x your caster level, only 1x. Not much of an improvement, but I expected them to do nothing at all.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 3:37 pm

virgileso wrote:
Pathfinder wrote:Damaging Magic Weapons: An attacker cannot damage a magic weapon that has an enhancement bonus unless his weapon has at least as high an enhancement bonus as the weapon struck.
Quite the change for those who ever run into the situation.

Well, thing is that's how it worked in 3.5 already. It justs happens it's buried in a really fucking weird place in like, the DMG or something.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 3:58 pm

Meikle641 wrote:
virgileso wrote:
Pathfinder wrote:Damaging Magic Weapons: An attacker cannot damage a magic weapon that has an enhancement bonus unless his weapon has at least as high an enhancement bonus as the weapon struck.
Quite the change for those who ever run into the situation.
Well, thing is that's how it worked in 3.5 already. It justs happens it's buried in a really fucking weird place in like, the DMG or something.

They later removed that rule in an erratum. That's why it's confusing.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 5:21 pm

And Pathfinder put it back. So this is Paizo's way of getting back at WotC for cutting them off. Amusing thought.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 5:29 pm

virgileso wrote:Combat reflexes was buffed to allow the person to make AoOs while flat-footed.

You mean like 3.5 Combat Reflexes normally does?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 5:36 pm

Oops, never realized that.

Still trying to figure out Vital Strike.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 5:54 pm

I think of Vital Strike as like the 4E damage increases. Every extra attack you get for BAB gives you another 1W on your standard action attack.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 6:42 pm

virgileso wrote: Fascinating ability for the Undead bloodline for sorcerer. If a corporeal undead used to be humanoid, they're treated as humanoid against the sorcerer's spells. I don't even know how charm person works against them.

I assume mindless undead are still immune to mind-effecting spells, so this shouldn't be too big a problem.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:32 pm

Summon Monster/Nature's Ally lists have been tinkered with quite a bit (e.g. various creatures have been moved up or down a level and druids can now summon giants, for instance).

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:47 pm

Neeeek wrote:
virgileso wrote:Fascinating ability for the Undead bloodline for sorcerer. If a corporeal undead used to be humanoid, they're treated as humanoid against the sorcerer's spells. I don't even know how charm person works against them.
I assume mindless undead are still immune to mind-effecting spells, so this shouldn't be too big a problem.

Nope, this is one of the explicit purposes of the ability in the bloodline description, to get over the immunity to mind-affecting. They are humanoids in every sense of the term.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 1:02 am

FatR wrote:I hope that the theoretical wank has died down enough and we can return to bashing discussing Pathfinder. Their SRD is out:
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/index.html

Huh. I did not expect them to do that. I guess that makes the two copies sitting around the local game store completely pointless. (Well, except for the fact that they are fucking huge and you can bust someone's skull with them, which is useful when the magic players are swarming).

On the other hand, I'm not sure its even worth trying to milk something function out of this ball of crap.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 1:42 am

It's official now: Combat Maneuvers suck a monkey nut.

-Username17

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 3:36 am

Voss wrote:Huh. I did not expect them to do that. I guess that makes the two copies sitting around the local game store completely pointless. (Well, except for the fact that they are fucking huge and you can bust someone's skull with them, which is useful when the magic players are swarming).

On the other hand, I'm not sure its even worth trying to milk something function out of this ball of crap.

Well, the stated intent of releasing the book was to keep a 3.5ish handbook in circulation for new players to be picked up. Crap it may be, but so was 3.5, and at least people can pick up the basics of it before graduating to house rules that actually fix shit.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 3:46 am

Were there grappling rules for one handed grapples before?<-Minor query

Any was I think they could've made grappling a lil better by not giving people an free save against it (with bonuses?!) against fun ideas like throwing people in fire. I think its enough just to have them work against the CMD on their turn and really too much for the grappler to have to make ANOTHER check on their turn. Also pinning penalties should stack with grappling penalties IMO.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:28 am

TOZ wrote:
Voss wrote:Huh. I did not expect them to do that. I guess that makes the two copies sitting around the local game store completely pointless. (Well, except for the fact that they are fucking huge and you can bust someone's skull with them, which is useful when the magic players are swarming).

On the other hand, I'm not sure its even worth trying to milk something function out of this ball of crap.
Well, the stated intent of releasing the book was to keep a 3.5ish handbook in circulation for new players to be picked up. Crap it may be, but so was 3.5, and at least people can pick up the basics of it before graduating to house rules that actually fix shit.

Bah. The intention of the book was to milk the alienated 3.5, Dungeon and Dragon magazine fans. Thus, an SRD is... surprising.

And I do want to know what Jason was smoking with the hey, wizards just need more shit.

I think Mystic Theurge deserves an award for 'most useless class feature'.
I'm a 7th level character. I can totally cast color spray as a second level cleric spell. Fear me!

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:09 am

All I'm saying is that the alternative is a wave of new players that think 4E is the norm.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:22 am

That is inevitable no matter what. This is a niche product in a niche hobby.
Honestly, this isn't a product aimed a new players- this is aimed at the current 20-somethings that thought 3rd edition was the height of role-playing, much like the current young 'uns are being introduced to 4e.

I doubt this will have much more influence then say, Rolemaster. An incoherent morass of rules and contradiction that will have a small handful of rabid and obsessive fans. Or maybe Torg or Talislanta.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:26 am

Fair point. I guess it doesn't really affect me too terribly much. I have a good core of friends who know 3.5, and are already interested in the bits of Tome I've introduced.

Edit: Oh fer the love of...

There are actually people saying the paladin is overpowered over there. That they added too much without taking anything away. +level to damage on Smite Evil is too much now with how many smites they get. Geez. You'd think people would understand that increasing a 1 to a 10 should not involve subtraction.

I'm also baffled that people think the change to Manyshot was a good thing. Now in Pathfinder you can have Rapid and Manyshot, and either get a bonus attack at -2 to all, or an extra attack that doesn't get sneak attack damage. Oh and both can only be used as part of a full attack. Being able to attack twice with a standard action was sooooo overpowered. And you should use Vital Strike if you want to deal more damage on a standard action.

Ugh.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 12:39 pm

Voss wrote:
Huh. I did not expect them to do that. I guess that makes the two copies sitting around the local game store completely pointless. (Well, except for the fact that they are fucking huge and you can bust someone's skull with them, which is useful when the magic players are swarming).

Yes, as well all noticed, once d20srd.org came out, sales of the PHB, DMG and MM dropped to zero immediately.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 1:36 pm

I'm happy to know that they have a 4th level spell that grants the caster Earth Glide (elemental body I[/b]), and is also available to 6th level druids for the long term. It was actually fairly hard to get ahold of that ability, since my DM decided thoqqua couldn't go through stone; and I don't know of any burrowing creatures that actually have their burrowing listed as leaving a tunnel behind (let alone also going through stone).

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 3:30 pm

Bloodline Arcana: Some undead are susceptible to your mind-affecting spells. Corporeal undead that were once humanoids are treated as humanoids for the purposes of determining which spells affect them.

That does nothing. Skeletons and Vampires can be targeted by charm person if they are treated as humanoids, but they are still immune to mind affecting spells.

Edit: Charms have gotten a very long rewrite. But it doesn't matter because the core abuse (casting charm person and then using diplomacy) is still there. There are opposed charisma checks and shit to make it follow orders, but it's a DC 10 + the target's Charisma mod Diplomacy test to get one of them to permanently and nonmagically switch sides once they have been charmed. For reference, the DC was a flat 15 in 3.5, so running roughshod over the world as a Beguiler or Bard is actually easier in Pathfinder.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:43 pm

Isn't the immunity to mind-affecting trait inherent to the creature type, thus switching the creature type off allows you to ignore the immunity?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:48 pm

virgileso wrote:Isn't the immunity to mind-affecting trait inherent to the creature type, thus switching the creature type off allows you to ignore the immunity?

Do you think that Vampires lose hit points when Sorcerers cast enchantment spells at them?

-Username17