Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[TiaC]

If psionics is on the table, Wilder is pretty good.

[Dean]

Barbarian or Paladin. Having introduced many people to the hobby I've found the best introductory character for people is Barbarian or Paladin, though sometimes a Ranger if they really like Legolas. Barbarians and Paladins both come preloaded with roleplaying traits so it's easy for people to play them without feeling weird. Barbarians speak gruff and call people puny, Paladins speak all high and mighty and promise to help people. The classes are mechanically simple and can hold their own at any level a first timer will be playing.

Give em a Paladin or a Barbarian. Let them do an impression of Conan or Superman for a couple hours and sword their problems to death while occasionally looking over their two or three other abilities and asking about them when they feel like.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Are there any CR 1/2 one HD intelligent crab people in Pathfinder?

[Rawbeard]

Anyone got experience with the Mythic Adventures stuff? I can only read that book in small doses without blowing a fuse or two, so I might need some external opinions before the game that uses that stuff starts.

[hogarth]

Did TGDMB ever have a "best class for first time player to D&D/PF" discussion? If so, what was it.

If you're playing at low levels, I'd suggest "guy with a bow". You'd have to help him pick out feats, but for a newbie you'd have to do that with any class.

[zugschef]

Did TGDMB ever have a "best class for first time player to D&D/PF" discussion? If so, what was it.

If you're playing at low levels, I'd suggest "guy with a bow". You'd have to help him pick out feats, but for a newbie you'd have to do that with any class.

My vote would be in for something with a nice fixed spell list and spontaneous casting.

[Dean]

Anyone got experience with the Mythic Adventures stuff? I can only read that book in small doses without blowing a fuse or two, so I might need some external opinions before the game that uses that stuff starts.

I read the whole thing. I think it would be really great if you said that only martials get mythic ranks. Full non spellcasters should get 10 Mythic levels and Paladins or Rangers should get 6 or so. If only Martials got mythic ranks it would be a great way to bring class disparity in line. Since that's not true it's just another book where the caster options blow the martial ones out of the water. If you want more details then just let me know what you're curious about.

[Night Goat]

Are there any CR 1/2 one HD intelligent crab people in Pathfinder?

There aren't any first-party ones that I know of, but the Cerulean Seas campaign setting has a playable crab people race.

[Rawbeard]

I read the whole thing. I think it would be really great if you said that only martials get mythic ranks. Full non spellcasters should get 10 Mythic levels and Paladins or Rangers should get 6 or so. If only Martials got mythic ranks it would be a great way to bring class disparity in line. Since that's not true it's just another book where the caster options blow the martial ones out of the water. If you want more details then just let me know what you're curious about.

I'd like to know what Paths are worth a damn, if you aren't a full caster. I have to postpone reading those after comparing "cast every spell ever" to " make a slightly improved attack". At least the feats look nice.

I will be playing Wrath of the Righteous and am not sure, if I want to raep reality in the earhole, or if I will play a non-wizard, probably paladin or inquisitor, for thematic reasons. But if they can't get nice toys, I guess I'll enslave outsiders for a year and a day, because planar binding wasn't quite good enough.

[Axebird]

Martial damage goes absolutely insane in Mythic Adventures. The Champion path gets to increase its speed by 30 to 130 ft, and move and make a full attack at the end. Which would be pretty nice and close to what martial attacks should look like, but Mythic Power Attack, Mythic Improved Critical, and Mythic Vital Strike are all things that exist.

Mythic Power Attack alone lets you burn a point of mythic juice to ignore the attack penalties of Power Attack for a full minute (AKA an entire fight), and it increases the returns you get from +2/+3 to +3/+4, and its bonus damage is doubled before being multiplied by the critical multiplier of your weapon on a critical.

Mythic Improved Critical also improves the multiplier on your weapon.

Mythic Vital Strike makes the normally garbage Vital Strike tree multiply your damage in its entirety instead of just your damage dice- instead of moving and full attacking you can just drop this on someone, and if you want to nova you can burn juice on Amazing Initiative to hit someone with it twice. An 11th level warrior with 3 tiers is looking at dealing damage in the realm of 6d4+87 (102 average) on a normal hit, and 10d4+205 (230 average) on a critical (assuming crits and Mythic Vital Strike are multipled in a sane way- otherwise don't even bother rolling damage). That's an NPC class with a +2 weapon, +4 Str item, and no special shenanigans or buffing. And an 11th level character is expected to have 5 tiers, plus actual class features.

[rasmuswagner]

Did TGDMB ever have a "best class for first time player to D&D/PF" discussion? If so, what was it.

If you're playing at low levels, I'd suggest "guy with a bow". You'd have to help him pick out feats, but for a newbie you'd have to do that with any class.

You give him Precise Shot, and that one trait from the new Inner Sea Gods book that says "one dude is NOT cover".

[radthemad4]

Are there any CR 1/2 one HD intelligent crab people in Pathfinder?

There's a third party crabman from the Tome of Horrors, but that's CR 2.

[Dean]

I'd like to know what Paths are worth a damn, if you aren't a full caster. I have to postpone reading those after comparing "cast every spell ever" to " make a slightly improved attack". At least the feats look nice.

The martial classes are Guardian, Champion and Trickster. I would rank them in that order. Guardians have the best path abilities but Trickster and Champion both get an extra attack every round. The feat "Dual Path" will let you get two path's abilities and get the extra attack even if you choose Guardian which I recommend. Trickster has a couple good moves but not enough to go down his entire path. Champion is just the Fighter with bigger numbers, it never solves any fundamental problems with the Fighter itself. Guardian has a few actually interesting abilities that could genuinely increase your power level and survivability. Here's the path abilities worth reading.

Universal Path Abilities
3rd Tier: Divine Source grants you two domains. You can cast one spell from each spell level in your domain as a spell-like once a day. Picking something like Travel Domain will let you fly and teleport a couple times a day providing you're high enough level.

Guardian Path Abilities
1st Tier: Borrow Elements could be turned into a real nuke power if you optimize it. Every 10 points of elemental damage you take lets you add 1d6 elemental damage to an attack you make. If you have access to some nontraditional healing (like temporary hp shenanigans) or even some powerful traditional healing like the Heal spell then sitting in a Volcano for a couple rounds, refreshing yourself with a Heal, then jumping into a fight can net you a big pile of d6's
Sacrificial Shield is a great power. Once per round your shield takes the damage you would. Even a nonmagical off the shelf shield can grant you 30 extra hp of damage you don't have to take every round.
3rd Tier: Cage enemy lets you make AOO's against 5ft steps which can really help you keep casters around.
Parry Spell is tremendously strong and can let you knock away spells if you can make attack rolls higher than their DC's which you should totally be able to do.
6th Tier. Indomitable can give you daze immunity which can be really important to certain builds and is hard to find.
Mythic Resolve just gets you as many rerolls on saves as you have mythic power points so is fantastic for your survivability.

Guardian has powers you can build around, powers you can try to optimize for and this means it is the Martial class with the highest potential rewards and is the one I recommend both from a flavorful and functional perspective.

Champion Path Abilities
1st Tier: Aerial Assault lets you make a jump check attack and is fine. It doesn't actually solve your need to fly by mid level though so you still need to do that.
Punishing Blow either lets you deal damage that can kill any regenerating creature or is totally fucking useless. It's unclear to me
3rd Tier: Elemental Fury can make you immune to an elemental damage type, which is nice.
Penetrating Damage lets your attacks have one trait you can change each round, like Chaotic, silver, magic and so on. Handy.
6th Tier: Perfect strike can let you make a double damage attack instead of normal attacks. It's fine.

Champion's fine. It's just fine. It has a couple things that are useful but its abilities being nice to have is the highest bar it hits. If you Dual path'd into champion you could get it's automatic extra attack ability and then pick the one or two abilities off its path list that were handy to have.

Trickster Path Abilities
1st Tier: Path Dabbling lets you pick a path ability off any list once so that's kinda cool.
Transfer Magic lets you hit people and steal their highest level spell effects off of them and onto yourself. This is the only reason I like Trickster at all
3rd Tier: Vanishing move is at will invisibility.

Trickster is whatever. Fuck trickster. His best trick is getting someone else's trick.

[TiaC]

So, back to Sacred Geometry for a second. Over on GitP, someone proved the minimum number of dice to be assured of hitting your target.

The results were:
Level 1: 4 dice
Level 2: 8 dice
Level 3: 9 dice
Level 4: 11 dice
Level 5: 12 dice
Level 6: 13 dice
Level 7: 13 dice
Level 8: 14 dice
Level 9: 14 dice

Usually you'll need less of course.

[MfA]

Could you link that proof? I don't even see where to start with an analytical proof.

[TiaC]

Here's the first piece. He uses the cancelation proof later on. The rest can be found in all the post by meschlum on this page.

It is not elegant in the least.

[TOZ]

They made Divine Grace a feat in the ACG, by the way. It's called Divine Protection now.

[Rawbeard]

oh, this will be good. any other "smart" moves in the ACG anyone should be worried about?

[magnuskn]

oh, this will be good. any other "smart" moves in the ACG anyone should be worried about?

Unless there is some further information people have missed, they gave a generic dex-to-damage feat out. For one-handed slashing weapons. But not for piercing weapons. So, if you take one level of Swashbuckler, you can use such iconic finesse weapons like the bastard sword and dwarven waraxe with dexterity-to-damage/-to-hit, while the rapier users can not apply their dexterity to damage rolls.

It kinda boggles the mind.

[animea90]

oh, this will be good. any other "smart" moves in the ACG anyone should be worried about?

Unless there is some further information people have missed, they gave a generic dex-to-damage feat out. For one-handed slashing weapons. But not for piercing weapons. So, if you take one level of Swashbuckler, you can use such iconic finesse weapons like the bastard sword and dwarven waraxe with dexterity-to-damage/-to-hit, while the rapier users can not apply their dexterity to damage rolls.

It kinda boggles the mind.

You can put Agile on any weapon to add your dex to damage. Or take the Dervish Dancing feat for the scimitar.

[magnuskn]

You can put Agile on any weapon to add your dex to damage. Or take the Dervish Dancing feat for the scimitar.

Yes. Not the point.

They gave out dex-to-damage to all one-handed slashing weapons, i.e. stuff like bastard swords and battleaxes, over piercing weapons like the rapier. In the book containing the new Swashbuckler class, whose iconic weapon is the rapier (according to Paizo, whose iconic swashbuckler is a female half-elf wielding a rapier).

[virgil]

Did they ever give an explanation for why they seemed to have gone out of their way to not let swashbucklers use their iconic weapon?

[Archmage Joda]

Where are you seeing these feats? To my knowledge the ACG isn't out yet, unless I'm severely misremembering the release date.

[magnuskn]

Did they ever give an explanation for why they seemed to have gone out of their way to not let swashbucklers use their iconic weapon?

Not yet, although I'm pressing them on the issue. So far no response, although they are prepping for GenCon and probably will respond only after they return.

Where are you seeing these feats? To my knowledge the ACG isn't out yet, unless I'm severely misremembering the release date.

In the product thread some guys, who have received their PDF's early, since they are suscribers to the RPG line, are throwing out spoilers left and right. Slashing Grace, the dex-to-damage feat for slashing weapons, was spoiled in detail, while so far nobody has found anything in the book which likewise would give dexterity to damage for the rapier or other piercing weapons.

And the agile weapon enchantment is not from the setting-agnostic hardcover books, but from some side product specific to Golarion, so not every GM allows it.

*edit*

And of course, while I was posting this, Jason Bulman wrote a post in the pertinent thread, explaining that they overlooked that little problem until the book already had gone to print and therefore have included a similar feat specifically for rapiers (so, I guess, sorry all other light/one-handed piercing weapons) in the Advanced Class Guide Origins companion book.

So, not that much a bizarre decision as a human error. Okay.

[Voss]

They 'overlooked' the fact that the swashbuckler didn't function as designed with the weapons people expect a swashbuckler to have?

Do they all shop at 'Cars With Square Tires, Inc?'