Pathfinder Is Still Bad

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:57 pm

Yeah, if I recall correctly they have. I'll point them that way. How do archetypes interact with hybrid classes if they want to do a Skald? Could they use bard archetypes with that?

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:12 pm

I would imagine that as long as the Skald offers up equivalent class features, you wouldn't have a hard time talking the DM into permitting such a thing.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 10:48 pm

well, given that I am the GM, no, I just wanted to know if there was something already explicitly said about it

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 1:56 pm

The official line on archetype compatibility is that class features have to match by name as well as content, which rules out pretty much any base class archetype for their hybrids. If you ignore that you'll still likely have to patch some differences (which should be reasonably simple for an archivist skald, say).

Slade · Post by **Slade** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 12:49 am

Pretty sure they need to use the Skald archetypes: is there one of those that doesn't emulate the bard ones?

Slade · Post by **Slade** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:51 am

So pathfinder is bringing out superheroes in Ultimate Intrigue book (archetypes). http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5li ... ng-Classes

If you remember the playtest where there was four classes. The feedback was listened to because they combined them into one/two.
*Vigilante now has two specializations, stalker or avenger, but many talents can be used by any vigilante.
*Warlock and zealot are now archetypes.

One archetype seems to be like the Hulk The brute has a hulking out-of control vigilante identity, and he can't always stop the transformation when he's in danger, Gadgeteer seems to be like Iron Man, magical girl (or boy) archetype with a transformation sequence, Gunmasters gun-based vigilante, Mounted furies are mounted vigilantes like Zorro whose steeds also have a secret identity, etc, etc.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 4:09 am

And everyone and their mom is going to grab the paladin that doesn't have to be LG.

Archmage Joda · Post by **Archmage Joda** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 9:42 am

But what I want to know, is the Warlock still basically an ass sandwich with bog juice dipping sauce?

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 9:52 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:And everyone and their mom is going to grab the paladin that doesn't have to be LG.

Why, is it especially good? The must be LG part is a selling point to many people.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 10:08 am

Orca wrote:
CapnTthePirateG wrote:And everyone and their mom is going to grab the paladin that doesn't have to be LG.
Why, is it especially good? The must be LG part is a selling point to many people.

Not having to be LG is a selling point to many people as well. It's an ass shaped cake, though; someone on 4chan's /tg/ leaked the archetypes and you're paying for alignment flexibility with worse abilities and slowing of your good ones. The Paladin of Tyranny is better, mechanically.

Warlock can automatically attack melee and ranged with their blasts, which count as light weapons because reasons. They also split it into the Cabalist as well, because reasons. Magical Girl is more Minky Momo than Madoka (even though the iconic for the archetype looks like a Homura that went native) , and is basically Unchained Summoner Lite. The gun one is hilariously bad, as it has per day restrictions on the gimped Gunslinger Deeds they get.

Also, there's an archetype that lets you be a really shitty Spiderman which gets its lunch stolen by a Shapeshifting focused Druid archetype in the same book .

Gnorman · Post by **Gnorman** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 8:48 pm

At the risk of sounding somewhat hypocritical, holy FUCK these archetypes are just everything wrong about Paizo amped up to eleven. Piddly little shit and minor bonuses intended to give players the illusion that they matter.

In their lust to cater to every possible niche (and continue to sell ludicrously stupid splatbooks), they've managed to create some incredibly dumb shit. A "courtly ranger"? Isn't that, y'know, a fucking rogue?

And yet these people will lap it up. "Oh, a non-lawful Paladin? I've wanted to play one for years! I finally get to, except that it's shittier than the regular Paladin because Paizo still feels the need to slavishly worship at the altar of outmoded alignment restrictions. Oh, and I guess this is almost literally nothing that I or any non-drooling member of my group could have whipped up in five minutes or less, but I'm going to give people actual money for it."

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Mar 24, 2016 10:39 am

It seems weird since the designers have such a hard-on for Chaotic Good, and I know at least one designer has stated that lawful good is another type of evil. You'd think there's be an awesome chaotic good paladin so JJ's waifus can take levels in it and be awesome.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 11:23 am

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:It seems weird since the designers have such a hard-on for Chaotic Good, and I know at least one designer has stated that lawful good is another type of evil. You'd think there's be an awesome chaotic good paladin so JJ's waifus can take levels in it and be awesome.

Chaotic Good, done the stupid way where you do whatever the hell you want and claim its justified afterwards because your opponents were evil, is a popular as shallow way to play TTRPGs. It fits the murderhobo play-style for characters who want to claim they aren't just bloodthirsty mercenaries.

Never mind that actual chaotic good characters are tricky to pull off - characters who maintain a solid moral compass while being unable to handle the constraints of society are tricky. There are certainly famous examples, but it's much harder to pull off than the traditional Boy Scout superman lawful good approach.

Claiming lawful good is evil though...that's profoundly stupid and profoundly unimaginative at the same time. It is perfectly possible for lawful good and chaotic good characters to utterly despise one another without considering each other evil (ex. s.CRY.ed).

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 2:16 pm

Mechalich wrote:
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:It seems weird since the designers have such a hard-on for Chaotic Good, and I know at least one designer has stated that lawful good is another type of evil. You'd think there's be an awesome chaotic good paladin so JJ's waifus can take levels in it and be awesome.
Chaotic Good, done the stupid way where you do whatever the hell you want and claim its justified afterwards because your opponents were evil, is a popular as shallow way to play TTRPGs. It fits the murderhobo play-style for characters who want to claim they aren't just bloodthirsty mercenaries.

Never mind that actual chaotic good characters are tricky to pull off - characters who maintain a solid moral compass while being unable to handle the constraints of society are tricky. There are certainly famous examples, but it's much harder to pull off than the traditional Boy Scout superman lawful good approach.

Claiming lawful good is evil though...that's profoundly stupid and profoundly unimaginative at the same time. It is perfectly possible for lawful good and chaotic good characters to utterly despise one another without considering each other evil (ex. s.CRY.ed).

No, no, no. Alignments don't make sense. Don't talk crazy, as if they could make sense.

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 3:50 pm

Slade wrote:So pathfinder is bringing out superheroes in Ultimate Intrigue book (archetypes). http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5li ... ng-Classes

Archetypes are fast to write (especially since Paizo doesn't playtest it - to the point that many aren't playable at all, not in the sense "it's not balanced" but in the sense "the rules don't make sense" or "you have to roll more dice and do more computation each round than a fucking videogame"), so they brag about writing many archetypes and nothing else. Uh, congratulation, i guess ?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 5:57 pm

Alignments are a quagmire, but you'd think one thing everyone could agree in is that the alignments literally named "good," explicitly in opposition to evil, are not evil.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 6:59 pm

Chamomile wrote:Alignments are a quagmire, but you'd think one thing everyone could agree in is that the alignments literally named "good," explicitly in opposition to evil, are not evil.

Nope. They're gibberish top to bottom.

Lurky Lurkpants · Post by **Lurky Lurkpants** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 8:18 pm

Chamomile wrote:Alignments are a quagmire, but you'd think one thing everyone could agree in is that the alignments literally named "good," explicitly in opposition to evil, are not evil.

Of course not, because people want "Objective Alignment." Despite the core rulebook treating alignments mostly as personality traits it is very important that we make anyone who raises skeletons to work on farms to feed orphan puppy nuns wear a bright scarlet letter that says "Evil." Similarly, there was a great rush to defend the Lawful Good goddess Iomedae when an adventure had her brutally injuring players who answered trivia questions about her life incorrectly. You see, "good isn't nice," meaning "[Good] isn't necessarily 'good,'" and thus the last shreds of meaning are lost.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 8:23 pm

Y'know if Paizo wasn't Paizo and had some balls, I could see a setting that really milked the philosophical implications of [Good] really not correlating with 'good'.

Probably been done before though.

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 8:25 pm

erik wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Alignments are a quagmire, but you'd think one thing everyone could agree in is that the alignments literally named "good," explicitly in opposition to evil, are not evil.
Nope. They're gibberish top to bottom.

Have to agree with Erik here. Alignments don't actually mean much at all. You can easily build a chain of thought that allows basically any action to be under taken by any character and have it be "within" the bounds of the alignment. As objective statements of morality they make even less sense, there is to much overlap.

That said, having paladins of multiple alignments is also freaking stupid. Everytime somebody feels the need to do this for D&D it ends up with the author presenting a screed on what the chaotic good version of a paladin is and is supposed to uphold. It also ends up being fundamentally stupid and meaningless. The paladin should just be required to follow some code of action (that can be drawn from historical and literary sources and should not be so stifling that it makes other people angry to be around the player) and not have any alignment restriction.

The problem with an alignment bound class like the paladin is that the ease of playing the class will be 100% tied to how much the DM does or does not like the class concept / required alignment. If your DM wants to play a bad ass mofos game he is probably going to be frustrated that you showed up with a paladin. If he thinks lawful good MUST = lawful stupid then its going to be impossible to have fun playing a paladin. This can be true of other alignment restricted classes too. While people who PLAY anti-paladins are usually anti-social and probably intend to things that are disruptive of table play, it actually can affect things that are seeming innocuous like druids. I have played both with players and DMs who were under the impression that a druid had to sometimes be a dick to his friends in combat in order to remain neutral.

If the Devs really believe that Lawful good = evil then they have taken their fake philosophy to the point of absurdity.

Gnorman · Post by **Gnorman** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 8:46 pm

Why do we even need the paladin to have a code in the first place?

Paladin is a motherfucking game construct. It just means "guy with full BAB, cleric spellcasting, and a pretty horsie." None of those things require any alignment or code of conduct whatsoever.

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 9:06 pm

Gnorman wrote:Why do we even need the paladin to have a code in the first place?

Paladin is a motherfucking game construct. It just means "guy with full BAB, cleric spellcasting, and a pretty horsie." None of those things require any alignment or code of conduct whatsoever.

Quite frankly, alignment restrictions should not be used as a mechanical balancing mechanism ever. However, a class called a freaking paladin should have some things that ties him to that concepts broader mythology. That said, the only time I think that "not following your code" should result in a loss of class features is if a character explicitly rejects or repudiates a code to which they have sworn themselves.

A paladin who struggles with, has lost faith in, or plays fast and loose with his code can all be very interesting at the table. The code should be part of the appeal of the class not a "this is a hindrance and is worth XYZ additional powers"

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 9:10 pm

Gnorman wrote:Why do we even need the paladin to have a code in the first place?

Backwards Compatibility

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Mar 24, 2016 9:37 pm

Lurky Lurkpants wrote: Similarly, there was a great rush to defend the Lawful Good goddess Iomedae when an adventure had her brutally injuring players who answered trivia questions about her life incorrectly.

My understanding was that this was the editor's fault. Supposedly the original version of that encounter involved the PCs taking relatively small amounts of nonlethal damage every round to reflect that it was dangerous for mortals to be in the presence of a deity even when said deity likes you and wants to help. The editor changed it from small amounts of nonlethal to larger amounts of sonic damage.

And not to defend the encounter (as it is a shitty encounter), this is something 4chan likes to exaggerate about. It's only slightly shitty, not crazy shitty (I've heard claims that if you say the wrong thing Iomedae kills your character, turns it into a demon, then sends it to fight the PCs later. That is something pulled out of someone's ass).

Lurky Lurkpants · Post by **Lurky Lurkpants** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 10:01 pm

The issue isn't really the type or amount of damage. "Being in the presence of a deity hurts" is something I could get behind. However, the issue is she blasts you for not saying what she wants.

The first question is half trivia, like you need to make a History or Religion check. If you fail AND aren't "confident or humble," she tells her heavenly choir to blast you. Next there is a question with no set answer, but if you answer without hesitation (which is to say confidently, the correct response to the first question), she has them blast you. Then she asks you how you are going to do the task she is telling you to do, and wants "conviction and bravery" again or you get the blast!

Essentially, a Lawful Good God is allowed to use corporal punishment against people she magically kidnapped and is demanding do a job for her, and for answering questions incorrectly or in the wrong tone (which is the opposite from one question to another). If an editor changed it from "nonlethal damage in her presence" to that, I think talking about the amount or type of damage is missing the forest for the trees.