Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[OgreBattle]

Also, suddenly every inquisitor or warpriest believes in the ferryman Charon? That is some serious horseshit, even for a have-it-all kitchensink like Golarion.

But I quite enjoyed the nerdrage over the Dex-to-damage fiasco with the ACG, especially since JB sneak-peaking another feat from the upcoming Player Companion for the new classes proves that it won't change in the forseeable future. I mean, what exactly is their problem with offering straight Dex-to-damage options anyway?

Paizo takes the balancing of mundane weapons and non-magical maneuvers SUPER SERIOUSLY (ex: banning Crane Wing for being overpowered) and are very keen on making sure the sense of balance is maintained as well as keeping the verisimilitude that a water-balloon fighter is punished for not using a longbow.

Paizo is also very serious about nerfing feats they deem overpowered, like their editors nerfing Prone Shooter's "+2 accuracy when shooting from prone" to "negates penalty for shooting a crossbow from prone", even though there is no penalty for shooting a crossbow from prone position.

[Archmage Joda]

So, I like the idea of being able to be a caster and also good with a sword, namely, the gish type. But how badly would I be shooting myself in the dick to be a gish rather than a full caster, and would I be better off with Magus or with a Blade Adept Arcanist possibly prestiging into eldritch knight or something?

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, I like the idea of being able to be a caster and also good with a sword, namely, the gish type.

Play a Samsaran oracle with the Spirit Guide archetype (Advanced Class Guide). Cherry-pick spells from the paladin/ranger list with your Mystic Past Life feature and then cherry-pick wizard/sorcerer spells with the Arcane Enlightenment Hex from your Lore Spirit Guide.

Unless you're abusing the spell-like ability prerequisite rules to get into Eldritch Knight, give up on the idea entirely. It comes in too late to make a difference and your BAB and CL is gimped. At the 3/4th mark of the game, you'll have a 3/4th BAB and -2 CL. Fucking whoooooo. Magus is even worse. If you absolutely insist on being able to only cast 6th level spells at character level 20 as long as you can cast spells with a full-attack, play a Sacred Fist (Warpriest Archetype) instead. If you take the Crusader's Flurry feat you can use a real weapon with your flurry of blows attacks. Fervor lets you cast spells you know (which are drawn from the cleric/oracle list) as a swift action. There's your gish.

[Slade]

Inquisitors and warpriests traditionally place the coins on the corpses of those slain in battle, usually one over each eye or one in the mouth.

At 1 gold piece a coin, large battles are going to be expensive.

Whoa, no one said gold. Let us not be hasty. Silver and copper pieces work too.

[Avoraciopoctules]

So, I like the idea of being able to be a caster and also good with a sword, namely, the gish type. But how badly would I be shooting myself in the dick to be a gish rather than a full caster, and would I be better off with Magus or with a Blade Adept Arcanist possibly prestiging into eldritch knight or something?

If you play a monster with casting, it's generally a really sweet deal. Magus can be effective, though 1-dimensional compared to a full caster. You are in trouble if you fight monsters with the right resistances, and in general when you run out of spells. Arcanist was super good last I heard, so it would be hard for "blade adept" to totally sabotage it, but I don't know what the archetype does.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Blade Adept doesn't give good or even 3/4ths BAB.

[Axebird]

Blade Adept is only functional if you multiclass out of Arcanist. It's otherwise straight up worse than Arcanist.

[Koumei]

I'd just like to say that there's heaps of low-level magic gear that meshes so well with Abuse Magic Device. It's trivially easy to get at least +1 or 2 Armour Mastery or whatever it is the Fighter gets, along with the Cackle Hex and similar stuff, just by wearing the right hat and going "Yeah, I'm totes (class), honest".

[ishy]

Whoa, no one said gold. Let us not be hasty. Silver and copper pieces work too.

Actually obals do have a listed price. 12 gold pieces for:

Obals are small silver or gold coins that are embossed with a holy symbol and blessed by a priest of a god of war or death. Inquisitors and warpriests traditionally place the coins on the corpses of those slain in battle, usually one over each eye or one in the mouth.
The cost is for a batch of 12 obals

[Archmage Joda]

So, I like the idea of being able to be a caster and also good with a sword, namely, the gish type.

Play a Samsaran oracle with the Spirit Guide archetype (Advanced Class Guide). Cherry-pick spells from the paladin/ranger list with your Mystic Past Life feature and then cherry-pick wizard/sorcerer spells with the Arcane Enlightenment Hex from your Lore Spirit Guide.

Unless you're abusing the spell-like ability prerequisite rules to get into Eldritch Knight, give up on the idea entirely. It comes in too late to make a difference and your BAB and CL is gimped. At the 3/4th mark of the game, you'll have a 3/4th BAB and -2 CL. Fucking whoooooo. Magus is even worse. If you absolutely insist on being able to only cast 6th level spells at character level 20 as long as you can cast spells with a full-attack, play a Sacred Fist (Warpriest Archetype) instead. If you take the Crusader's Flurry feat you can use a real weapon with your flurry of blows attacks. Fervor lets you cast spells you know (which are drawn from the cleric/oracle list) as a swift action. There's your gish.

I like the sound of that oracle there, Lago, though which mystery would you recommend? Battle? Dark Tapestry? Something else?

I admit I hadn't initially thought of using divine caster at all, since I don't like the idea of being beholden to a deity or animism or somesuch, and am not very good at reflavoring them. But I admit, that is entirely my own problem.

[Lago PARANOIA]

For a gish Wood, Ancestor, Metal, and Battle are acceptable. Time and Lunar and Nature are good in the general case, though not very gishy. But it doesn't matter, because most of your mojo is going to be coming from buff spells. Because you're trading out some of your revelations for hexes (and the Lore spirit has some pretty good abilities) you can get by with a mystery that only has a handful of good revelations.

Alternatively, you can also go full-on Shaman and take Speaker of the Past. You get to cherry pick revelations from the Ancestor and Time mysteries and you get new spells at odd levels instead of even levels and you're a mostly-preparation/somewhat spontaneous caster. You also still get hexes and a lot of them are very good, like getting Craft Wondrous Item and a metamagic feat as bonus feats. However, the Shaman spell list isn't as good as the Cleric/Oracle one -- they're missing a few race-rockers like divine favor and plane shift and don't (and probably won't) get as much attention from other sourcebooks. You could do a lot of patching up with a human shaman's favored class bonuses (which lets them add a cleric or oracle spell of top level - 1), but that means giving up cherry-picking paladin and ranger spells. And they have some great ones. Shaman still has some great spells on the list, though, like dominate person, blade barrier, alter self, fly and overland flight, sleep and deep slumber, etc..

[ishy]

As an oracle grab the new feat from the advanced class guide:

Prerequisites: Cha 13, Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks, ability to cast 2nd-level divine spells; blessings, domains, or mystery class feature.

Benefit: You gain a bonus equal to your Charisma modif ier on all saving throws. If your Charisma modif ier is already applied as a bonus on all saving throw (such as from the divine grace class feature), you instead gain a +1 bonus on all saving throws.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That would be the clinching argument for oracle-sub-shaman instead of shaman-sub-oracle, except I don't think that feat is going to exist as-is for very long.

[Koumei]

Why not? It's a caster feat, of course it's allowed to be awesome!

[Archmage Joda]

I think I'm more inclined to Oracle over shaman anyway, simply because I think it's easier to fluff an oracle as more independent and self-determining than a Shaman. Also, I just like Oracle more than Shaman, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.

[OgreBattle]

Are any of these new hybrid classes particularly front loaded so you could multiclass something nice for a game that doesn't go above lvl 6?

[ishy]

Prerequisites: Ability to cast at least one force spell, channel energy class feature.

Benefit: A swift action*, you can expend one use of channel energy to grant your weapon attacks a bonus on damage rolls equal to the number of dice of your channel energy. This extra damage is force damage. This lasts for your next three weapon attacks or until the end of combat, whichever comes first.

How does 'till the end of combat work if I activate it out of combat? Say just before going to sleep.

* I'm assuming this should say, 'as a swift action'

[Antariuk]

Unless you're abusing the spell-like ability prerequisite rules to get into Eldritch Knight, give up on the idea entirely..

Don't say abuse, the FAQ allowing you to use spell-likes for spellcasting prerequisites is both official and very clear on that, they even made a second FAQ saying that even when it says you need to cast spells, as in more than one, a single spell-like got you covered because semantics. Eldritch Knight at 2nd level is doable, and much better than the shitty magus.

Are any of these new hybrid classes particularly front loaded so you could multiclass something nice for a game that doesn't go above lvl 6?

Some of them are indeed. Arcanist gets all his class features at 1st level. You'll only have 2 level-1 spells and your arcane reservoir is kinda small, but its not nothing.
One level of hunter gives you access to the ranger's saves, druid/ranger spells (whichever is lower in level) and the hunter's animal companion (which stacks with druid). If you want to pull some Teamwork feat shenanigans and can live with the bad spell progression, there you go.
Skald is pretty cool at low levels, a one-level dip nets you an angry bard, but for E6 games I think it could be worth to stick with it for 5 levels, especially with a barbarian/bloodrager (primalist) in the party, because at 3rd level you can grant everyone rage powers and at 5th level you can cast a cleric/wizard spell 1/day just because.

[magnuskn]

Unless you're abusing the spell-like ability prerequisite rules to get into Eldritch Knight, give up on the idea entirely. It comes in too late to make a difference and your BAB and CL is gimped. At the 3/4th mark of the game, you'll have a 3/4th BAB and -2 CL. Fucking whoooooo.

You can negate the -2 CL with the Magical Knack trait, however. Basically, you'll trail two levels behind a full Wizard in casting ability and have to deal with not getting two spells for free each level (if your GM insists upon this nonsense), while also having lost out on 3 BAB. For me it sounds like a doable compromise, given how you can use some long-term buffs like Heroism on yourself to get your attack bonus up to par. At the time where you have to decide if you want to level again as a Wizard or a beatstick class (i.e. after 15th level), the campaign will probably be over already or close to it.

[ishy]

Magical knack is weird though. They clarified that getting caster level boosts shut it off.

So if your caster level is level 8 (6+2 magical knack) as a level 11 character and you use prayer beads to get +4 to your caster level for 10 minutes, magical knack will not give you any bonus. Thus your caster level will be 10.

[magnuskn]

Huh, I must have missed that FAQ. Well, they don't exactly advertise them.

[ishy]

You can ride creatures of your size category, although encumbrance or other factors might limit how you can use this ability.

Normal: Typically a mount suited for you is at least one size category larger than you.

Does this count as a feat that does nothing or is it stealth errata?

[Neurosis]

This thread is too freaking long, about 200 pages too long for me to read, and seems predicated on other, older, perhaps somehow even longer threads that I REALLY don't have time to read.

Anyone feel like summing up for me in 500 words for less WHY Pathfinder sucks. Because I always feel underequipped to make that argument to folks who like it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, fine.

1.) The first is that Pathfinder decided to go for incremental and highly visible but unimportant changes to 3.5E D&D rather than going all-out.

2.) Because of this, the game's power level has slowly floated up thanks to expansion creep and in a lot of ways the game is more unbalanced than 3.5E D&D. The cleric archer is by no means dead, it just has a different form. The blaster wizard lost a couple of tricks and gained quite a few more.

3.) Pathfinder's fanbase and developers have collective amnesia towards the whole backwards compatibility promise and they have welshed on the number-one promise that led them to becoming a market leader in the first place.

[Dean]

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50083
The first post of the original thread should cover most of it.