God help me, I'm being bull-rushed into a Pathfinder game

[TheFlatline]

I mean, the Inquisitor sounds like a gimped cleric.

Compared to a 3.5 cleric yes.

But the cleric spell list is still a bit anaemic if you can only use PF sources and with the removal of divine power/favor stacking you can't really bulk out very well any more either. The Inquisitor is much better at ramping up lots of stacking bonuses for melee, most with swift actions too.

I can proclaim judgement on someone and get a +1 to attack and damage. Isn't that Magic Weapon for the cleric, which is a 1st or 2nd level spell? The rest of the stuff feels similar.

It scales, and the bonus stacks with enhancement bonuses.

Really the inquisitor ain't that bad.

As I said, I have zero experience with Pathfinder. I haven't even *looked* at what has happened to the original classes. I'll take your word for it though.

[magnuskn]

Well, due to me recently having seen Solomon Kane, after returning from college today I threw some numbers together for a 12th level archer Inquisitor, with really mediocre equipment and a 15 point-buy.

I got a character which needs one round to prep with self-buffs and then can do about 185 points of damage per round on average and will reliably hit. Of course if your campaign starts at level 1, that's pretty far away and the abiity to do that damage is limited to about 12 rounds per day, but it's still pretty nice.

The first levels of the class are not exactly inspiring, but it gets better pretty fast.

[TheFlatline]

Fascinating. That's a decent damage output.

[magnuskn]

It's mostly that the Judgement is a sacred bonus and Bane is an unnamed one. That together already gives a solid +5 to hit and +7 + 4d6 to damage at that level. With Divine Power you get another +4/+4 and another attack, for a total of four attacks at +23/+23/+23/+18, for 1d8+4d6+19 per shot. The first attack does double damage with the Manyshot feat.

And this isn't even closely optimized, I just used a simple +3 composite longbow with +2 strength adjustment and belt of dexterity +4.

Again, be mindful that this is at 12th level and that the power level of the class increments greatly at certain levels. The first three levels can be kinda bumpy, but that is also true for many other classes.

[TheFlatline]

So I had my choice of Alchemist and Cleric since the party has almost zero healing ability. As much as I like the magic orgasm field of healing ability of the cleric (I was going to make her a cleric of Love, and she'd orgasm and the sheer wonderfulness of it would heal people within 30 feet of me), the DM did the hard sell on me and I relented and took alchemist.

I *almost* rules-lawyered him into allowing me to take eschew materials as my 1st level feat, but in the end he invoked DM-Fiat since common sense states to make a potion, you need *some* kind of material and jug to put it in or else it's not a potion. Though the rules as written allow eschew materials since it repeatedly says that you treat your extractions as if they required spell components as a wizard or something stupid like that.

So I almost went for the min/max, but edged off ever so slightly. However, I did get him to promise me that he would let me play the character background of my choosing, which ended up being an elf coked out on his own creations, who fuels this little enterprise by cooking up drugs and spiking the potions he sells with incredibly addictive additives. That way, not just *any* cure light wounds potion is going to satisfy that addiction: only his is going to hit that spot.

Although he's receiving these omens pushing him towards this vague destiny (from the DM), he's adventuring to assemble components to create a compound that allows him to achieve the most perfect, intense high a mortal can experience.

Well, that and it's really unlikely that any city he stays in for long is going to approve of his business methods.

[Maxus]

he's adventuring to assemble components to create a compound that allows him to achieve the most perfect, intense high a mortal can experience.

He could do that by finding Elvis' body right after Elvis died. Possibly by some plane-hopping.

I mean, c'mon. Elvis was so full of drugs they had to bury him in a coffin with a childproof lid.

[TheFlatline]

he's adventuring to assemble components to create a compound that allows him to achieve the most perfect, intense high a mortal can experience.

He could do that by finding Elvis' body right after Elvis died. Possibly by some plane-hopping.

I mean, c'mon. Elvis was so full of drugs they had to bury him in a coffin with a childproof lid.

Either that or when Keith Richards kicks the bucket he could smoke Keith's ashes.

[Maxus]

I'm sure a pinch of Elvis would get you amazingly high, too.

[TheFlatline]

I'm sure a pinch of Elvis would get you amazingly high, too.

Followed by the urge to shoot my TV and eat a peanut butter and fried banana sandwich (grilled in bacon grease of course).

Oooh... there's another character trait. He needs to have the most god awful strange munchies imaginable.

[A Man In Black]

So this is the "Hey guys, help me wreck some poor bastard's game" thread for this month?

[Koumei]

To be fair, literally every other player in the game was grateful that it ended. They just had too much courtesy to actually insult the MC - what with most being his housemates (and they're shitty with him, but would rather not have him shitty with them) and me... having met him a couple of times before being roped into the game.

So they couldn't afford to put up with the endless bitching for leaving his game. My rudeness contributed to the game folding. The situation is resolved with the majority of people happy.

[Ganbare Gincun]

So this is the "Hey guys, help me wreck some poor bastard's game" thread for this month?

No, this is the "I should know better then to join this game, but I will anyway" thread.

[TheFlatline]

So this is the "Hey guys, help me wreck some poor bastard's game" thread for this month?

No, this is the "I should know better then to join this game, but I will anyway" thread.

This.

On the up shot, it's not the campaign I thought it was, so at least the story will be new.

I have no intention of actively trying to wreck the game, I'd rather just not play at that point, but if I have to play a boring character I'm going to burn out in less than a session.

As is, I'm hardly the most broken character concept in the game. The guy playing the wizard *almost* named himself "Minmax the Mage".

[TheFlatline]

Post mortem:

This game isn't going to last long. The DM's girlfriend basically is there to take up space and the DM's attention whenever possible, and has to be told by the DM everything that she does.

One guy is playing an entertaining character, but is rules-obsessive to the point that in one combat between six(!) PCs and two CR3 monsters, we went to the books no less than six times.

It goes on. In 5 hours the two new players met, we geared up to leave town, and had one encounter. The encounter lasted 90 minutes.

I've ran massive combats between half a dozen PCs and a dozen NPCs in 15-20 minutes. This was torturous.

Thoughts:

At level 3, my alchemist is consistently the highest damage output in the party. No shit. As long as I have flasks to throw, I'm getting something like a +8 to touch attack and getting my intelligence modifier thrown into damage.

Nobody told me about the Master Alchemy feat, which I can't take until level 5 anyway. Aside from this, the crafting rules are insane. It takes, as a base, one week to make a single flask of... well... anything. I can speed it up considerably, but the DM doesn't like downtime, and at the moment I can only make one dose of poison or one flask of whatever per day. Without some down time, my usefulness is going to drop significantly until I hit level 5 and suddenly I make shit in quantity.

Level 1 extracts are fucking boring. The list is so narrow that I had no interest in using any of them except shield and healing. Things get better next level I guess.

I'm seeing skill checks in the 30's at 3rd level, which is kind of insane. I myself can hit upper 20's lower 30's on something like 6 or 7 skills (that I min/max'd)

Our rogue uses bows and shit and doesn't have point blank shot or precise shot and is pissed that she can't fire into combat (this is the DM's girlfriend).

I didn't even use bombs. They do minimum a point more damage than a flask of whatever does, and a max of 6 points extra. Maybe in 2 more levels they'll start becoming more attractive.

Poison is going to be my other go-to through mid levels it looks like. We're using a poison creation system which lets me buff the save DC to higher levels given time and money, so if I'm ever given a few weeks I can make poisons to fit our group's play style, which apparently is glacier slow and kind of a roaming mob.

[Roy]

The topic says almost all of it. I have to do chargen tomorrow. What's more, the DM is more or less insisting that I play an alchemist because he thinks they're awesome.

I know next to nothing about pathfinder. I know it's based on 3.5 D&D. I haven't read any books. I really have stayed away from any threads on it because I don't care much. All I know about the party is that someone is playing a wizard who can cast magic missile 13 times a day at level one.

So what am I about to get myself into? Is there any advice? Is an alchemist a fucked up lame class? Any optimization tips?

My D&D style has always been to rogues and sometimes clerics. I don't dig traditional mages in D&D, and fighters got boring as they fell behind the power curve.

Should I just claim to have a case of the plague and duck out of the game?

Clerics do fine, being as they are a caster, and it is Caster Edition. Rogues are FUCKED. And by fucked I mean tied up and left for an entire room of horny teenagers.

I hope you like spamming save or ______ spells. They are the only things that work in Pathfailure.

[PaizoFanboy]

It may or may not be of any help at this point, but you can always find whatever you need to look up (that you don't have access to) over at:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

or

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

[TheFlatline]

Yeah those two websites were are main go-to resources during the game. I spent a couple bucks and downloaded the iphone app that let me search even faster, and that helped a lot.

The problem with this is that the game group seems like such a mess that I'll never get a good feel for Pathfinder.

But yes, I'm spamming drow poison right now along with alchemist fire and a few other things. I seriously am more useful and out-damaging the fighter, the wizard so far hasn't done more than 4 points of damage at all, and I had to give a brace of daggers to the bard that had poison on them because otherwise he either did 1 point of lethal or 1 point of subdual in combat (I'm dead serious). That way, he can at least be somewhat effective.

[Koumei]

I seriously am more useful and out-damaging the fighter

Show of hands who is surprised?

That said, I'm surprised it outdoes the Wizard.

[Archmage]

That said, I'm surprised it outdoes the Wizard.

In 1st-level damage output? I'm not. An at-will ranged touch for 1d6+INT is pretty awesome. The wizard's damage output from spells should honestly be pretty close to zero, but his effective kill count count be pretty high with judicious use of color spray or sleep.

[TheFlatline]

That said, I'm surprised it outdoes the Wizard.

In 1st-level damage output? I'm not. An at-will ranged touch for 1d6+INT is pretty awesome. The wizard's damage output from spells should honestly be pretty close to zero, but his effective kill count count be pretty high with judicious use of color spray or sleep.

He's a force mage. So eventually he'll be pretty decent, but right now he's flinging magic missiles.

Even then, he's one of those guys who just isn't quite sure if 14 magic missiles a day is enough for 2-3 encounters a day, so he is using some spell-like ability that shoots one single magic missile. He did a grand total of 2, 3, and 5 hit points per attack.

I know the alchemist is going to get outpaced by damage per round pretty quickly, like in the next couple of levels, and at that point I'll be turning out poison in enough quantity that I should be good for the levels that I'm buffing out the bomb ability, and then I can do moderate damage for a while there while still providing major buffs to the party.

I was just kind of surprised that he was *so* effective early levels.

[Archmage]

I was just kind of surprised that he was *so* effective early levels.

At 1st-3rd level, hitting is a serious concern against enemies with any armor whatsoever. Some dude in a chain shirt likely has AC 15 versus your range of roughly anywhere from +0 to +5 to hit. Throwing around ranged touch attacks at will is like having an effective +2 to +8 to hit at that point in your adventuring career--and that's in addition to your BAB and stat mod. And when you hit people, they die, because they have like 5 hit points. So you win.

[TheFlatline]

Postmortem part 2:

I got accused of cheating/playing my character wrong tonight. First time in my gaming career I had a blatant accusation thrown at me.

Situation: We're 3rd level, and a large swarm of mosquitoes were attacking while we were attacked by some other creatures.

The swarm was immune to normal weapons, but took a 50% damage bonus from splash weapons, which a bomb qualifies under. I rolled 1 point shy of max damage, and after all the bonuses was throwing 24 points of damage or so at the swarms. Not bad for a 3rd level character.

I was met by disbelief by at least two players. We went through the math again, and my dice rolling was not suspect since I use a dice tower for *everything*, and then the character was accused of being too powerful. I countered that the alchemist seems to start strong and peters out at mid levels, but really I was looking at some of the spell lists for the alchemist, and he seems to shift from a flask/poison rogue early on to a shape shifting flask throwing bomb tossing freak of nature. I'll literally become an areal bomber at 6th level, which I intend to abuse to the best of my ability.

And I haven't even had time to sit down and start brewing poisons and potions in earnest due to the DM giving me no down time.

I've more or less convinced the fighter to drop the shield and longsword eventually and go for a great axe or a great sword when he finds a magical one because I'll keep him in potions of shield forever, and because I'm about to make potions with benefits and durations equivalent of my level instead of the minimum caster level. So he'll have shield on most of the day (which is a shield AC bonus) and can ditch the normal shield for more damage output.

The rest of the combats, I was averaging in the teens for damage output, especially with the bonuses from feats & bardic bonuses. I literally was outdamaging the rest of the party, not just in average damage per round (I missed twice all night long), but in damage *when* I hit. The fighter could manage to meet my average if he maxed out his damage, and the rogue was a little farther behind. In one combat I inflicted more damage than the rest of the party combined. Which was insane. Touch attack is 90% of my attacks in this game, which is like a permanent +5 to hit most creatures at lower levels. Again, at lower levels I'm dealing damage on par to the the rest of the party, but hitting 25% more often usually than a comparable character who attacked normally.

Somehow, my skills are out of this world too. I don't get as many skills as the rogue, but my skills seem to be more applicable (we are travelling through the jungle so there is that), and at generally higher bonuses than she gets. I'm not sure how that happened, but I suspect it's a general inability for her to even construct a balanced character.

A few things are kind of cool in pathfinder. The cleave feat is nice. -2 AC in order to get an extra attack on a successful hit is a very cool ability. In theory the -2 AC should be a bad thing, but it's only a 10% increase in hit rate, and we're at the upper ends of the RNG right now as is, and fights aren't lasting more than 3 or 4 rounds. It makes sense to take the extra risk to shorten the fight by a round or two.

The girl who took the "Shagging the DM" feat needs to go though. She does not get that when you stab a monster in the face after you've hid, you're no longer hiding, and you can't hide again when you're still in melee combat. We had to explain this every. single. attack. It's not a difficult thing to figure out. Why the rogue is stabbing things when she could easily shoot and run off and hide again is beyond me. She also spends 90% of her time staring at her cell phone, leaves the room to go pee right as it's her turn, and other pet peeves that I almost feel guilty bitching about. Almost.

Anyway, alchemist *feels* broken. Considering it's one of the less bullshit classes, I can only imagine the utter insanity that a summoner must be. Maybe the alchemist isn't broken per se, but his abilities are narrow enough, and being a flask user is bullshit enough, that it's easier to optimize your role in the party than other characters. I don't have a particularly optimized party. The fighter isn't bad and just needs to up his damage output, and the bard is horrible at fighting but great at buffing, the mage has in his entire adventuring career inflicted more than 10 points of damage in an attack exactly once, and the rogue has a lot of trouble thinking tactically.

[Slade]

Glad you were sort of having fun (even with the shagging girl).

So is everyone unoptimized in that party but you?

[Archmage]

You're not OP. Everyone else just sucks.

[Molochio]

There is a fine art to breaking DMs and wrecking games.