Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[ubernoob]

But Dervish Dance still exists, is still the mechanically superior option by a mile, and precludes you from paying the feat tax.

Like, from Complete Warrior Dervish? What is the problem?

[Seerow]

But Dervish Dance still exists, is still the mechanically superior option by a mile, and precludes you from paying the feat tax.

Like, from Complete Warrior Dervish? What is the problem?

Pathfinder has a dervish dance feat, which makes Scimitars finessible and add dex mod to damage.

The problem then is that Swashbucklers get a bonus for using rapiers (I think free weapon finesse?), but that bonus is bullshit because using a Scimitar with Dervish Dance is better, so Swashbucklers are stuck paying the feat tax anyway.

[ubernoob]

But Dervish Dance still exists, is still the mechanically superior option by a mile, and precludes you from paying the feat tax.

Like, from Complete Warrior Dervish? What is the problem?

Pathfinder has a dervish dance feat, which makes Scimitars finessible and add dex mod to damage.

The problem then is that Swashbucklers get a bonus for using rapiers (I think free weapon finesse?), but that bonus is bullshit because using a Scimitar with Dervish Dance is better, so Swashbucklers are stuck paying the feat tax anyway.

Ah, ok. Thank you for clearing that up. Typical "feat tax the warriors instead of writing class features that matter" design.

[rasmuswagner]

Swashbucklers have Weapon Finesse - for piercing weapons. But it counts as weapon finesse, unrestricted, for prerequisites.

Dervish Dance requires weapon finesse. So swashbucklers can just straight up take that feat and have it work.

[Seerow]

Swashbucklers have Weapon Finesse - for piercing weapons. But it counts as weapon finesse, unrestricted, for prerequisites.

Dervish Dance requires weapon finesse. So swashbucklers can just straight up take that feat and have it work.

And what good does that do them now that they have their dex to damage but not to-hit?

[virgil]

Swashbucklers have Weapon Finesse - for piercing weapons. But it counts as weapon finesse, unrestricted, for prerequisites.

Dervish Dance requires weapon finesse. So swashbucklers can just straight up take that feat and have it work.

And what good does that do them now that they have their dex to damage but not to-hit?

Finesse and Dance both make Dex apply to to-hit.

[OgreBattle]

Are Pathfinder Cleric Archers stronger or weaker compared to 3.5?
Is a Druid Archer also viable?

[Kaelik]

Swashbucklers have Weapon Finesse - for piercing weapons. But it counts as weapon finesse, unrestricted, for prerequisites.

Dervish Dance requires weapon finesse. So swashbucklers can just straight up take that feat and have it work.

And what good does that do them now that they have their dex to damage but not to-hit?

Finesse and Dance both make Dex apply to to-hit.

Are you telling me that Dervish Dance looks like this:

Dervish Dance
Prereqs: Weapon Finesse
Effect: Dervish Dance allows you to use your Dexterity Modifier in place of your Strength Modifier for damage and to hit when attacking with Scimitars.

Because if it does have that bolded part, then it is stupidly redundant. And if it doesn't have that bolded part, then in fact Swashbucklers can either:

Use a Piercing Weapon and have Dex to hit, but not damage. Or use a Scimitar and have Dex to damage but not to hit. Or take Weapon Finesse with one of their feats so they can have it apply to both, thus completely ignoring their class feature.

[virgil]

Are you telling me that Dervish Dance looks like this:

Yes. It explicitly makes scimitars use Dexterity for melee attack & damage rolls, it also makes scimitars count as piercing weapons. While it is certainly redundant, it does prevent the latter issue you were describing of choosing between to-hit and damage for Dexterity.

[Kaelik]

Are you telling me that Dervish Dance looks like this:

Yes. It explicitly makes scimitars use Dexterity for melee attack & damage rolls, it also makes scimitars count as piercing weapons. While it is certainly redundant, it does prevent the latter issue you were describing of choosing between to-hit and damage for Dexterity.

Pathfinder: We fuck up so often, sometimes they offset.

[ishy]

Problem with Dervish Dance is that it is in a setting specific book, thus not always available when the swashbuckler is.

[Voss]

Oh, it's just swashbuckler stuff.


That's zero problems solved so far.

Well, one. It doesn't have the fuck-you aspect where you have to wait until level 2 to get some form of weapon finesse, and therefor be completely useless for a whole level.


And the investigator's thing is so fucking clunky I don't even know where to start.


Ok, at 4th level, you can... no. What? Why the fuck would anyone write this?
OK. There are two abilities. Studied Combat and Studied Strike. Studied strike is like sneak attack, except you have to make a free action upon successfully hitting someone you've used Studied Combat on. In melee. And its 1d6 at level fucking 4, +1d6/2 levels. And its like sneak attack damage and immunities and nonlethals shit and concealment. Whatever.

But yeah, to study a enemy, you've got to take a standard action. And it does indeed last half your int in rounds. And gives you +half/level as an attack bonus (to melee attacks). But it immediately _ends_ if you actually use it to make a studied strike, which is +1d6 at fucking level 4. And once studied, a creature is immune to being studied again for 24 hours. For reasons.

So once every other round, you can stab different people for weapon damage +1d6. At level 4. And it must be melee.

This class is made of shit. The vivisectionist alchemist is right the fuck over there.


I want to facepalm at warpriest as well. This got shit for hanging a bunch of abiltiies on the deities favored weapon mechanic, ignoring the fact that a lot of favored weapons are mechanically shit. So people whined.
And they fixed it! Sort of. By giving all sacred weapons a damage progression, similar, but different from (and by different from, I mean worse) the monks unarmed damage progression. So if you've got a sacred weapon that does less than 1d6 damage, at levels 1-4 it does... 1d6 damage. 5-9 1d8, 10-14 1d10, 15-19 2d6. 20: 2d8! Adjust for large/small because fuck you, hobbits.

But this is all moot, because the sacred bonus also applies to any weapon you take weapon focus on, and you get free weapon focus at level 1 that you can apply to anything and just ignore the favored weapon of your god. I guess it could be worse (could have been a feat tax for weapon focus, but they could have just decreed that warpriests just do 1d10 damage with single handed favored weapons and 2d6 with two handed favored weapons. That way fluff and mechanics can hang out and be friends.

Bottom line is, at level one you still take a greatsword or whatever, because have a dagger do 1d6 instead of 1d4 is fucking trivial. I guess it doesn't suck if you just start at level 15, but, whatever.


shaman spells:
Seriously what the crap?
druid list +
cause fear + sleep?
alter self (another buff to go along with all the cleric buffs)? ....owl's wisdom (did they forget this was on the druid list?)
deep slumber? Fly? animate dead?
divine power, scrying, planar ally?

plus all the little cherries on the spirit lists like color spray, enlarge person and etc.

Funny thing, Mass Owl's Wisdom is on the Shaman's spell list 3 separate times. Which kind of bones the Lore spirit when they hit 6th level spells.

[GâtFromKI]

Are you telling me that Dervish Dance looks like this:

Dervish Dance
Prereqs: Weapon Finesse
Effect: Dervish Dance allows you to use your Dexterity Modifier in place of your Strength Modifier for damage and to hit when attacking with Scimitars.

Because if it does have that bolded part, then it is stupidly redundant.

It isn't redundant since scimitars aren't finessable.

Nobody knows why there is only one weapon allowing Dex to damage, nobody knows why that weapon isn't even finessable in the first place, and nobody knows how a dervish dancer seems to pokevolve (at level 1 and 2 he doesn't know what a scimitar is, then he uses it better than a rapier).

[ishy]

Well if all pathfinder sources are allowed you can also grab the +1 agile enhancement: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/mag ... ties/agile

[Username17]

Well if all pathfinder sources are allowed you can also grab the +1 agile enhancement: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/mag ... ties/agile

Internet "charop" culture has a very different set of assumptions than any I've ever seen in any real game. Ultimate Equipment deservedly draws fire for being a book that doesn't bother to tell you what region, culture, or time period might plausibly give access to the items in its pages, thus making it extremely up in the air whether any item in Ultimate Equipment will be allowed in a real game. Agile isn't even in Ultimate Equipment, and is instead from a book so obscure that most pathfinder players don't know it exists (the Pathfinder Society Field Guide).

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I've played and ran a bunch of 4E D&D games and a handful of Pathfinder games. And the bar to get something accepted in those games post-wiki and post-Character Builder isn't like for most books. Generally, the criteria is:

[*] Is it first or second party? If it isn't, you have to specifically ask for it and the default answer is 'no'.
[*] Is it something that doesn't get a lot of whining on Internet boards such that the DM may have heard about, like 4E D&D unerrata'd Rain of Blows? If it is, while the default answer is yes it's not an unconditional 'yes'.
[*] Most importantly, is it organized to look like it belongs among the other crap? That means that if someone spot checks your option, was it buggy and required the use of the Homebrew option to get it to fit in? If someone looked at the index was it innocuously nestled between two options that are in the core book? If no, as long as it doesn't look too out of place it might still get in.

The Agile enhancement meets all three, so I expect it to be allowed in the vast majority of Pathfinder games. There's a reason why 4E Dragon and 4E Dungeon were regarded as valuable sources of material. Rather than worthless piece of crap options tables will have to line-item veto like for pre-4E Dragon and Dungeon.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now, I ain't saying that there aren't some Pathfinder games that ban everything not in the core books except for what they line-item veto. TenebraeMU* is one of them. And it's also the most popular and longest-running game I know of.

However, by and large with the release of the Pathfinder wiki and the 4E Character Builder, you're more likely to get something approved that existed in some shitty Dragon #402 Article than, say, a Warblade or even Zen Archery. Nothing to do with the objective power level or appropriateness of the expansion item (because that was never a limitation) but more to do with the presentation.

[Mask_De_H]

What Lago says is definitely true for PBP: if it's on the SRD and not third party, it's generally fair game.

[sake]

Some opinions on the last test document for the Advanced Class book, because I'm just finally bored enough to read it.

The Arcanist- I was always a huge fan of the broken as fuck spellpoint using wizard variant, so I like this quite a bit even though it's clearly balls out stupid crazy overpowered. I think this is the first real tier 1 new class PF has made. I'm not quite sure, which would be the funnier outcome here... the butthurt from it being released at this level of power or the butthurt from it getting nerfed at the last second and having it's spell prep slots reduced down to a point where it loses all of it's versatility.

The Bloodragers- Wow that's a stupid name, like 90's stupid. Like 'I think we should just risk the lawsuit and use Rage Mage instead' stupid. The fluff is pretty silly as well, and the fact that you don't actually get any sort of casting buff during a rage makes the class's entire shtick pointless. Another poor choice is that it seems to have the magus' spell list, including it's shit ton of DD spells while lacking a gimmick to actually use them in any useful way. If it's going to have any hope of living up to it's fluff and it's spell list, it desperately needs some sort of buff to damage spells when enraged. Like a seriously jacked up CL boost or an auto empower/still/heighten effect, something. Still, I have wanted a full BAB + weak spontaneous casting class in PF for awhile now, and it does have enough buff and utility spells on it's list to turn it into a fairly viable combat monster even without that, and at least it's not a Hexblade or something.

the Brawler- Oh wow, it's a monk AND a fighter... that's like a turd that's been dipped in manure. One interesting thing I noticed was that the way they describe the Brawler's punches, makes it sound like they can just enchant their fists like normal weapons. It would funny as fuck if this is true while the actual monk is still stuck with his over priced fisting amulet.

the Hunter- Okay, it's a Ranger who trades some of it's attack bonus for a better pet and more spell casting. It's not a bad class, I can see people wanting to play it, and it's viable enough... but it just feels kind of unnecessary and redundant all the same.

The Investigator -I can just not find a way to give a fuck about this class. To be fair , I really don't give a fuck about the alchemist either, and this class actually skips the only mildly fun and interesting features the Alchemist had, the bombs and mutagen. The one entertaining thing I can say about it is that someone pointed out to me that it's basically Batman as a class (no no, the actual Batman, not the stupid pet name for Wizards) but that was before they nerfed it's sneak attack to try and make the Rogue look like it's not a waste of a class.

The Shaman - Witches and Druids already shared a lot of the same thematic space, so I'm not really sure what the point of the class was. It's a druid without a combat pet and shapeshifting AND it's a witch that lacks any of the Hexes people actually give a shit about. It does get a large number of Save or Sucks and utility spells for a divine class though so it does make a solid pure divine caster. The only spirit beasts that seem worth a shit were Nature, Heaven and Lore, but Lore needs the Rolled Stats of a God to actually get any use out of it's main feature thanks to the huge MAD they threw on it.

The Skalds- It is just a bard that trades all his normal songs for a single melee buff song. There is no fucking reason why this fucking thing couldn't have just been done effectively as a Bard Archetype, and this space used for something creative.

The Slayer - It's a Ranger that ditches it's spell casting for some rogue class features. Like the Hunter, I can see a reason for why people would want this class around, but it still feels like something that could have just have easily been a Ranger Archetype instead.

The Swashbucker- Because the heat death of the solar system will happen before someone will just give the fucking Fighter a fucking mobile, dex based class option. Seriously, this like the eighty seventh Swashbucker class, the collective whole of the D20 systems has seen, and the only new thing this one brings to the table is that they stapled a renamed Grit mechanic to it. Also, now correct me if I'm wrong , but at no point does this class ever actually get a bandaid feature to make dex apply to melee damage? So this class really only works if you're allowed to take a single feat from a obscure setting book, which locks it to using a single weapon that's really not even an iconic Swashbucker weapon? Fun times.

The Warpriest -Okay, the joke here is that at some early point this must have been a Cleric/Monk combo, but then someone pointed out that the class would be superior to an actual monk in every god damn way, so they quickly removed all the punchy shit and asspulled some crap about the paladin onto it just minutes before the beta document went up. Right?Really, it must be that, all the Sacred Weapon and weird scaling bonus stuff just screams Monk, the crunch goes out of their way to NOT mention how those might interact with unarmed attacks, and even PF wouldn't have thought that a Cleric/Paladin was a thing that actually needed to exist.

[hogarth]

The Skalds- It is just a bard that trades all his normal songs for a single melee buff song. There is no fucking reason why this fucking thing couldn't have just been done effectively as a Bard Archetype, and this space used for something creative.

As a side note, it drives me crazy how much name-space collision there is in Pathfinder. For instance, there is an archetype called Savage Skald, an archetype AND a barbarian ability called Brawler, an archetype called Swashbuckler, and a bunch of archetypes called XYZ Shaman. So those are the most original names you could come up with for new classes?

[OgreBattle]

The Skalds- It is just a bard that trades all his normal songs for a single melee buff song. There is no fucking reason why this fucking thing couldn't have just been done effectively as a Bard Archetype, and this space used for something creative.

As a side note, it drives me crazy how much name-space collision there is in Pathfinder. For instance, there is an archetype called Savage Skald, an archetype AND a barbarian ability called Brawler, an archetype called Swashbuckler, and a bunch of archetypes called XYZ Shaman. So those are the most original names you could come up with for new classes?

Challenge: create a PC with as many recurring names as possible.

[Koumei]

For what it's worth, Ninja and Samurai had similar problems in D&D 3.X - you could take two Ninja base classes (Rokugan and C:Ad), then something like three "Ninja of X" prestige classes, and if you line them all up, you get to spin a bonus reel or something.

[sake]

For what it's worth, Ninja and Samurai had similar problems in D&D 3.X - you could take two Ninja base classes (Rokugan and C:Ad), then something like three "Ninja of X" prestige classes, and if you line them all up, you get to spin a bonus reel or something.

I might be remembering it wrong, but the versions of the Samurai and Ninja in the Complete books were basically just 3.5 updates of the 3E Oriental Adventures/Rokugan classes, instead of wholly new and different classes

[Koumei]

Nah, very different: the OA Samurai was a Fighter with more skill points and a stupid skill system that does not (and should not) exist any more (Iaijutsu Focus), the CWar Samurai is... a pool of stupid. With the worst illustration ever.

The Rokugan Ninja is a Rogue with Full BAB, fewer skills and the ability to add Int to Initiative (and Con*5 to move speed), the CAd one was a rather disappointing Sudden Strike user.

[erik]

Challenge: create a PC with as many recurring names as possible.

A similar themed challenge. I once played a "Masters of the Universe" campaign where everyone picked a "Master ___" Prestige class that they planned to take at least a level of.

If I recall correctly, we had planned for Exotic Weapon Master, Master Samurai, Master of Chains, and Master of Shrouds.

We didn't make it very far though. At average party level 4 we fought a couple Spawn of Kyuss's mixed in with zombies which unsurprisingly turned out to be bad news especially when nobody had read Monster Manual II yet or had Heal skill or Remove Disease. Only the Master of Chains survived because he ran away due to their fear aura.