Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[kjdavies]

They made some powers based off of fairy tales related to witches. Children's fairy tales, mostly.

Not impressed.

PS. Child Scent should be renamed "Creepy as Fuck" Scent.

"pedobear sense... tingling."

I don't really need to add "in my pants" to that, do I?

[Psychic Robot]

Sean K. Reynolds is displeased with your critique.

vow of poverty should be renamed vow of sucking.

Yeah, funny thing about poverty, it sucks.

D&D/Pathfinder isn't pop culture and legend. It's its own thing. Ryan Dancey used to say, "the D&D rules is a very good simulator of a typical D&D game." D&D isn't Tolkien. It isn't Forbidden Kingdom. It's not Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's not Blind Fury. It isn't The Crippled Masters. The game assumes from the very start that gear is an essential part of being an adventurer. You can't just throw that out for one guy and expect a smooth experience, any more than you can run a campaign that's standard except for "there is no metal armor" or "there are no clerics" and expect a smooth experience.

To different degrees, a fighter, monk, and wizard (with spellbook) are all going to suffer without any gear. When you're playing a game where people can teleport, raised the dead, and survive multiple bites from a dragon, you're not playing the sort of game where a guy with no equipment can keep up compared to the plate armor warrior and the master wizard. There's a reason why "I have no equipment" martial arts movies have the protagonist fighting (1) other martial artists, (2) mooks with standard weapons. They don't fight dragons. They don't fight balor-type demons. If you want a game where the "I don't have equipment" guy is an up-to-par character, you need to either change the game so that nobody has tons of gear (like Exalted, which is an anime-style high-fantasy martial arts game where a starting character can punch-out a T-rex), or play a low-level game where gear isn't as important.

"My character is a badass even though he doesn't have any equipment" is a paradigm-changing statement as much as "my character is a badass even though he doesn't gain levels" is a paradigm-changing statement. You can create campaigns where they work, but you can't do it in a vacuum. You can't expect E6 characters to keep up with standard D&D/PF characters, and you can't expect gearless characters to keep up with standard D&D/PF characters.

Conan doesn't have tons of magic items.
Gandalf and Merlin don't have tons of magic items.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser don't have tons of magic items.
Ancient Greek heroes don't have tons of magic items.
And most wuxia-style martial artists don't have tons of magic items.
But none of those characters or stories are very much like D&D/PF.

I really am sorry that the UM VOP doesn't work for you. But you're asking for something that goes against one of the basic assumptions of the standard game, and one page or one paragraph isn't going to create something that (1) gives you what you want, (2) is balanced against the other characters, and (3) is also realistic in any sort of way.

Not having gear is a power-down for ANY class. Period. It's just that nobody tries to make a "gearless fighter" or "gearless wizard" and expects it to keep up characters toting 100k gp worth of gear. But for some reason they think monks should be able to.

[Kaelik]

I hate to be the one to break it to SKR, but yes, we know not having gear is a huge power down for every character.

Here's the thing, if you are going to make an option in your game that allows people (and forces them, once they've picked it) to not have gear, then it needs to make them viable without gear.

The thing where you make an option for a gearless character, and when people point out it sucks donkey balls, and then you say "well of course it sucks donkey balls it's supposed to" is exactly as excusable as making a class with d4 hd, no class features, half BAB, and all bad saves, and then calling it a PC class. When people point out that it sucks donkey balls, they are doing it because your job as a designer is not to give people material that serves no purpose except to make their character suck donkey balls.

[Psychic Robot]

On creating a sixth level cone of cold that could be cast as a swift action:

Folks, you need to calm down. I said I'm looking into this. The spell is clearly too good as written, I'm just trying to track down where the problem happened. Most of the qinggong monk abilities were written up in a different format and got turned into spells to standardize them, and this looks like a legacy of that conversion. Some aspect didn't get fixed when it was changed from a monk power to a spell. Whether it's the level, or the casting time, or the damage, or the area, I don't know at the moment because we've been busy getting our Gen Con products out the door and because I'm finishing up the Beginner Box. There's something wrong with this spell, and it'll get fixed, and it's not a symptom of a new design direction for the game.

[Draco_Argentum]

Would anyone even crap their pants over a monk casting CoC as a swift action? They'd still be ass.

[Ice9]

Actually, that might make CoC somewhat more viable as a spell. It's still not the best, but it would have a viable niche - get rid of lots of mooks without wasting your action. So obviously, it was a mistake - this is Paizo we're talking about.

[Swordslinger]

I hate to be the one to break it to SKR, but yes, we know not having gear is a huge power down for every character.

Here's the thing, if you are going to make an option in your game that allows people (and forces them, once they've picked it) to not have gear, then it needs to make them viable without gear.

Yeah SKR is a moron. It's surprising he'd miss a point so simple.

But I guess that's where 3E is riddled with trap options, because the designers had this stupid philosophy that some things are supposed to gimp you. Their idea of rewarding rules mastery is for people to just know what options to never use.

[Ravengm]

Prehensile Hair (Su)

And now I want to make a Bayonetta campaign.

[MGuy]

I have a player that took that one. There's a lot of uncovered ground about what that ability can and can't do. He's having a lot of fun testing the limits of it. Its been "fun" so far.

[Koumei]

Remember that it's only a short amount of time the hair can do that, so Bayonetta spends most of her time nude in such a game. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, just worth noting.

Because it's unbalanced if you let the hair be long and prehensile all day.

[MGuy]

Yea we ignore that lil time limit bullshit.

[Grek]

I'd play a witch with a prehensile mustache just for the wtf factor.

[tzor]

I'd play a witch with a prehensile mustache just for the wtf factor.

Wouldn't that be a warlock? I've got the perfect character ...

[Grek]

Nope. Female witch with a prehensile mustache.

[MGuy]

Nope. Female witch with prehensile *pubes*.

Fixed.

[Psychic Robot]

I'm going to be playing in a Pathfinder game. Here's the challenge: is there any way to make a character that does decent melee damage without using Power Attack? Because I'm not seeing one. Also, fuck this system for being a shitty piece of shit.

As much as I dislike 4e, you can clearly see how their design focus works and how the game has changed over time as they have learned things, such as offering races different stat boosts, allowing characters to choose which stat they will use on a power, and the refining of solo monsters. Pathfinder has no such thing. The entire Pathfinder development team just tosses shit against the wall and doesn't even bother to see what sticks.

[MfA]

Power attack is basically a feat tax in PF. Take it, just calculate weapon attack/damage on your character sheet assuming you're using it and forget about it.

It's easier to pretend you have an "accurate attack" feat you can use 1% of the time to sacrifice damage for to hit.

[hogarth]

I'm going to be playing in a Pathfinder game. Here's the challenge: is there any way to make a character that does decent melee damage without using Power Attack? Because I'm not seeing one.

I'm not sure if this counts in your opinion, but in one of their splatbooks they published a feat called Piranha Strike that's similar to Power Attack but for a Dex-based character.

A smiting paladin does pretty good damage, too.

[Midnight_v]

I'm going to be playing in a Pathfinder game

Why?
Because its the only game in town?
I ask because I have this suspicion that pathfinder wins the edition wars by virtue of simply "Being there"

[fectin]

I saw the rulebook on sale today. $50!
That is past the pricepoint where I care about shitty knock-offs.

[Psychic Robot]

Because its the only game in town?
I ask because I have this suspicion that pathfinder wins the edition wars by virtue of simply "Being there"

Yes. Also, my friend is running it, so I'm more willing to put up with bullshit. At this point, I don't even know what game I'd like to play for a fantasy game. 3e and Pathfinder are both too much work to make work. I might even be willing to try that abomination of 4e at this point.

[K]

I saw the rulebook on sale today. $50!
That is past the pricepoint where I care about shitty knock-offs.

You can buy new ones from Amazon for $32, but the complete three books is still like $85.

I love my FLGS as much as the next guy, but paying retail is bullshit.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'm going to be playing in a Pathfinder game

Why?
Because its the only game in town?
I ask because I have this suspicion that pathfinder wins the edition wars by virtue of simply "Being there"

My FLGS has banned 3e and 3.5 games because their policy is "No games are to be played in the store if we don't sell them". I respect their right to run their business how they see fit but I take my patronage elsewhere. (Plug: http://thedragonshoard.com/ ). I run my 3.5 eberron game there, great atmosphere!

[CraigM]

My FLGS has banned 3e and 3.5 games because their policy is "No games are to be played in the store if we don't sell them". I respect their right to run their business how they see fit but I take my patronage elsewhere. (Plug: http://thedragonshoard.com/ ). I run my 3.5 eberron game there, great atmosphere!

Wow, that's amazingly short-sighted. I guess I can see where they would want to do this, but that totally locks out having the players have a say in what the game store carries (Ie: I" just found this really cool game [title here], and people online think it's awesome. It's a little slow getting through the distribution chain, but you should really carry it when you can. We'll play a few games here just to get people interested.").

Oh well. Not the first time I've seen places do stupid things.

[CraigM]

I saw the rulebook on sale today. $50!
That is past the pricepoint where I care about shitty knock-offs.

you can pick up the core rulebooks for $10 each as PDF from Paizo's site. You might still find that too much money to pay for the game, but at least Paizo offers the option.