Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[TOZ]

Bow and arrow rogues still have a pretty good backup plan. Behold, Sniper Goggles.

Throw in a Goz mask and smokesticks too.

[TheFlatline]

I basically totally broke the game as an alchemist, and I wasn't even trying.

2 Questions. How were you dealing with your bomb supply. Did you just kill everything before you ran out or was it actually just never a problem. Secondly how were you bombing shit so hard before level 8? Like Mask said they can throw tons of bombs when you hit 8th level but before that it's basically one bomb a round which, while giving incredibly reliable damage, didn't seem like that much damage.

I actually only used bombs for added oomph. At level 8 I started using them a lot more often. I might have mistaken the dragon incident for level 8 when you could make full round attacks with bombs. That sounds familiar actually, so I stand amended.

I used shitloads of flasks though. Which was cool, because Craft Alchemy got my level as a bonus, master alchemist meant that I turned them out at night or whenever we had down time. Plus thunderstones and tangle bags and all that shit you never really play with at low levels but would be useful if you had an unlimited supply of. You add your intelligence modifier to thrown item damage, and even if you miss (which with a decent dex is almost never) you deal minimum damage as splash damage. So when I got multiple attacks I could fling a couple flasks and deal pretty much a consistently reliable amount of damage every turn. Full round attack with 2 flasks was minimum of like 14 points of damage a round, and that's if I miss both attacks (INT of 22, so +6 damage, and 1D4 makes 7). I had a narrow damage range, but it was highly dependable. And that's before I resort to bombs.

We went with point buy and I rolled an elf so I had an int of 20 to start with and even getting the mage's leftover INT boosting magic items meant extra damage consistently. I don't have that char sheet (the DM insisted on keeping them all and lost the sheet) so I don't remember precisely everything that I did, but it was pretty painful.

I'll note that if the group I was playing with had any brains then I probably wouldn't have shined as much. We had a mage that specialized in force spells (yes really), a bard that did 1D3-1 damage per turn when he attacked, and a summoner that listened to what the DM thought was cool and had a completely ineffective character.

As for running out of bombs I didn't worry about it too much. I think I ran out once, during a BBEG fight. It became more of an issue when I could take a full round to dish multiple bombs, but if memory serves your int bonus also gives you extra bombs. So pouring everything into INT meant that you pulled bombs out of your ass. Again, I'll blame the DM for really not thinking about what constituted his PCs, because I specifically told him that without changing how hard an encounter was, he could pick enemies that had a high dex bonus and little to no armor and actually work around my "I hit on a roll of 2 or higher" bullshit.

That was what was most broken with the alchemist I think. It's less bullshit than the flask rogue, but since *all* your flask/bomb attacks (and that's like 90% of your offense) are ranged touch, you basically start out with what was on average was a +4 to +6 to hit on top of your dex bonus (and hey you can totes make a potion of cat's grace to fuck with the RNG more) and your BAB unless the DM had two brain cells and sent you up against something without an armor bonus and lots of dex.

On top of that you got most of the cure spells as potions and some other fairly useful potion/spell capabilities.

[Longes]

From Paizo forums:

My rogues laughs at these silly casters, fighters, and whoever else when he sneaks up on them while they sleep, coup de grace them, and walks away :3.

That aside. Rogues are plenty spiffy. IMO they are better than monks if nothing else at all.

(also, like marthkus I do wonder if TWF is a trap for rogues, I think a one handed fighter wielding a wand /throwing dagger or such in the off hand is just as good if not better, but people rage when you build non-TWF rogue builds for some reason)

How do these people even breathe?!

[darkmaster]

Well obviously between dips of their head.

[OgreBattle]

From Paizo forums:

My rogues laughs at these silly casters, fighters, and whoever else when he sneaks up on them while they sleep, coup de grace them, and walks away :3.

That aside. Rogues are plenty spiffy. IMO they are better than monks if nothing else at all.

(also, like marthkus I do wonder if TWF is a trap for rogues, I think a one handed fighter wielding a wand /throwing dagger or such in the off hand is just as good if not better, but people rage when you build non-TWF rogue builds for some reason)

How do these people even breathe?!

With a special breathing aid:

[OgreBattle]

Ok, so I've learned all about how to make a great thief in Pathfinder by not being a rogue... how about being a bulky melee type?

Other than "Cleric with a martial melee weapon". Like how Inquisitors and Alchemists make great Thieves and can totally dress in black ninja hoods, do they also outshine barbarians n' paladins in melee with a good build?

It's important that the character still visually looks like "A guy in armor with a big sword/axe" so you could RP him the way you'd RP a Fighter, so no turning into a dire bear with dire bear pets.


*And is there a multiclass combination of non-spellcaster classes that makes a "the greatest among the mundanes" class?

[Longes]

So, apparently spreading rumores is an obscure ancient art in the Pathfinderland:

A rogue with this talent can attempt to spread a rumor through a small town or larger settlement by making a Bluff check. She can do so a number of times per week equal to her Charisma modifier (minimum 0). The DC is based on the size of the settlement, and it takes a week for the rumor to propagate through the settlement. If the check succeeds, the rumor is practically accepted as fact within the community; succeeding by 5 or more over the DC decreases the time it takes the rumor to propagate by 1d4 days. A failed check means the rumor failed to gain traction, while failing by 5 or more causes the opposite of the rumor or some other competing theory involving the rumor’s subject to take hold.

Bards shed a lone manly tear

[OgreBattle]

Patient Strike (Combat)
Your training under the Master of Swords has taught you that a well-timed strike is worth waiting for and that patience will serve you well in the long run.
Prerequisite: Int 13.

Benefit: You can choose to ready an attack as a full-round action instead of a standard action. When you do so, you gain a +2 bonus on your attack roll when your readied action triggers.
Normal: Readying an attack is a standard action and doesn’t grant a bonus on your attack roll.

[MisterDee]

Well, it's circumstantial, but it does something positive. That makes it superior to the handful of feats that do nothing, and to the Achievement feats which require you to voluntarily suck for a quarter of the campaign before they give you an irrelevant shitty bonus.

[Mask_De_H]

Ok, so I've learned all about how to make a great thief in Pathfinder by not being a rogue... how about being a bulky melee type?

Other than "Cleric with a martial melee weapon". Like how Inquisitors and Alchemists make great Thieves and can totally dress in black ninja hoods, do they also outshine barbarians n' paladins in melee with a good build?

It's important that the character still visually looks like "A guy in armor with a big sword/axe" so you could RP him the way you'd RP a Fighter, so no turning into a dire bear with dire bear pets.

Oracle with the War Mystery, (Beastmorph) Vivisectionist Alchemist (with a four-drop in Ninja for the Scout archetype or a two-drop in Master of Many Styles), Synthesist Summoner to get your Kamen Rider on.

*And is there a multiclass combination of non-spellcaster classes that makes a "the greatest among the mundanes" class?

Multiclassing isn't the best of ideas anymore, partially because of Favored Class, partially because there's nothing of value in most martial classes.

[MfA]

Inquisitor I actually like, the abilities gel relatively well, you don't get forced into a very small subset of character builds to be effective like the Magus ... there is still the problem that melee can't have anything nice, but that's pretty universal.

The biggest problem is that it's fiddly with lots of resource pools.

[sake]

Ok, so I've learned all about how to make a great thief in Pathfinder by not being a rogue... how about being a bulky melee type?

Other than "Cleric with a martial melee weapon". Like how Inquisitors and Alchemists make great Thieves and can totally dress in black ninja hoods, do they also outshine barbarians n' paladins in melee with a good build?

It's important that the character still visually looks like "A guy in armor with a big sword/axe" so you could RP him the way you'd RP a Fighter, so no turning into a dire bear with dire bear pets.

Let me put it this way, there's a cleric domain that gives you Rage... no, not the spell (although the domain gives you that too), the actual barbarian class feature. Of course, at level 8, you'd laugh at this because you have 4th level buff spells and Rage would be a joke. But it would be on your character sheet, and you could mock at the actual Barbarian about it.

Also the Psychic Warrior is another great bulky melee type replacement. (as well as a monk replacement) It's even secretly a quasi full BAB class, as half it's Path options give you a scaling attack bonus buff. Sure you won't get the same number of attacks, but if it bothers you that much , you could always just take the special Full BAB, Full Caster Progression prestige class they gave to just Psychic Warriors by sneaking the feature into the crunch rather than on the class chart.

And assuming that ridiculous psionic feat that changes a power's manifestation display made it over to Pathfinder, you could even make all your powers emit a sweat like odor instead of glowy crap for maximum manly warrior appearance.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You guys know how I said that Pathfinder tables generally let you use anything on the wiki as long as it traces directly back to a Pathfinder sourcebook?

Psionics is one of those things that falls through the gap. Yes, Psionics were a big part of 3rd Edition and are even on the basic SRD, but I have yet to find a table that lets me or anyone use Pathfinder psionics.

Normally this would be (yet another) scathing indictment of the whole 'backwards compatibility' lie that caused Pathfinder to get its unearned market share, but it's fucking psionics so who gives a care?

[sake]

A lot of that is the same residual crap that kept it out of 3/3.5, but even I admit that Pathfinder Psionics got crazy broken really fast. They started out weaker as they didn't nearly the same amount of buffs PF gave the arcane and divine caster, but by the second psionics book things got really stupid.

The Tactician's probably the biggest offender with it's suite of spells that let it cherry pick the highest skills, feats, saves, and attack bonus from the entire party, and I think at higher levels even leech from opponents, And thanks to the Expanded Knowledge feat any psionic class can grab those.

The book did have some funny bits though, such the writers finally giving up on making the Soulknife actually work, and just saying "here's an archetype that gives you spell casting,including that one spell that's better than your main shtick in nearly every way, now shut up!"

[Seerow]

Even I admit that Pathfinder Psionics got crazy broken really fast. They started out weaker as they didn't nearly the same amount of buffs PF gave the arcane and divine caster, but by the second psionics book things got really stupid. The Tactician's probably the biggest offender with it suite of spells that let it cherry pick the highest skills, feats, saves, and attack bonus from the entire party, and I think at higher levels even leech from opponents, And thanks to the Expanded Knowledge feat any psionic class can grab those.

The book did have some funny bits though, such the writers finally giving up on making the Soulknife actually work, and just saying "here's an archetype that gives you spell casting, now shut up!"

Even that progression is like Ranger/Paladin level progression. Though I guess that would throw it into the same category as the other listed classes.


I actually just read through the PF Psionics stuff recently. I actually really liked the Aegis (Though I do find it weird how a class so tied to its armor thematically seems to get really godawful defenses), and some of the other new stuff is cool (I liked the Tactician and Vitalist), but all of the stuff that just got updated from 3.5 just felt lackluster. Especially with Soulknife and Wilder who both had really major problems that don't seem to have gotten addressed. (And yet I still see forumers talking about how the DSP Soulknife is the best thing since sliced bread.)

[Longes]

It's not a "Pathfinder is bad" thing, but since we have a large thread already...

Let's talk about a poster child for every fighterosexual - spherical wizard in an antimagic field.
What can a wizard do, if he has to deal with an antimagic field (let's say, that BBGE's castle is covered by one). What if wizard has time to prepare? What if it's a surprise antimagic field?

[Lago PARANOIA]

What can a wizard do, if he has to deal with an antimagic field (let's say, that BBGE's castle is covered by one). What if wizard has time to prepare?

Calling spells and undead creation spells.

What if it's a surprise antimagic field?

Then move outside of the area. Antimagic fields aren't very wide unless the DM is wielding some kind of plot effect like 'then Killfuck Soulshitter uses their Artifact Sword to create an antimagic field 1 mile wide!' If they are, load up on Prismatic Walls and Spheres. Not only are those nice Save or Sucks in their own right, if used intelligently it'll get you out of the Antimagic field jam. If you want to be extra cruel, pack a Daylight Wand and some way to see past the Prismatic Whatever and then pummel the moron who thought that they were safe behind your barrier.

[Atmo]

Question: Conjuration spells as "Orb of Whatever" could be cast from outside the Antimagic Field, enter and squash the puny guy at it center?

[ubernoob]

Question: Conjuration spells as "Orb of Whatever" could be cast from outside the Antimagic Field, enter and squash the puny guy at it center?

Yes. Ray Deflection counters those though.

[Atmo]

Question: Conjuration spells as "Orb of Whatever" could be cast from outside the Antimagic Field, enter and squash the puny guy at it center?

Yes. Ray Deflection counters those though.

The brazillian Devir version changed "ranged touch attack" to "ranged attack", so this was one of my last doubts about this game.

[fectin]

Create Undead and enough time solves basically every problem.

[ubernoob]

Create Undead Planar Binding and enough time solves basically every problem.

ftfy

[sake]

Let's talk about a poster child for every fighterosexual - spherical wizard in an antimagic field.

I choose D)It doesn't matter fucking matter because the same field just suppressed every magical item fighter has, making him as useless as the wizard. Except the powerless wizard can probably still run away slightly faster than the powerless armored fighter can.

[TiaC]

Wear a Pointy Wizard Hat that's actually a Shrink Itemed 10ft high hollow metal cone. When you enter the antimagic field, it expands and breaks line of effect. Then teleport.

[fectin]

Create Undead Planar Binding and enough time solves basically every problem.

ftfy

Original was correct. Your version is also true though.