The Gaming Den

Grek wrote:It's CR 5 because you have to be a minimum of level 5 to credibly fight it. It has a 60' fly speed, so if you can't fly it wins regardless of what else is going on.

If that's the reason, then they are fucking idiots, because fully 30% of your fights as a level 1-4 party are supposed to be against CR fucking 5 monsters, so if you pick that one, and it will 100% kill the fucking party, then it shouldn't be a goddam CR 5.

Grek wrote:Actually, a much better way to put it is: A "Ravid" encounter isn't actually a fight against a CR 5 monster. It's a fight against 20 Animated Objects of whatever size the DM says there are, with a floating snake in the background that you can kill as an alternate win condition. The EL of that encounter should be whatever the EL of the 20 Animated Objects is.

I'm not sure in what way you think this contradicts what I am saying. I'm saying that monsters should be CRed based on what minions they can have, and that while the Ravid should be better written, in any case the DM can obviously choose to structure encounters with minionmacner monsters in an appropriate way, so they could do the same thing with the Succubus.

Kaelik wrote:2) Can absolutely control things more than CR 4, there is nothing that stops them from using their Dominate on CR 19 monsters, They in fact are expected to spam Dominate on every PC in combat.

Ok, I'll come back to the rest later, but you need to start fucking specifying Pathfinder or 3.5

Me: 3.5 succubus aren't that great, I think it was fine for PF to give them a boost.
You: They're great because they have Dominate Monster Person.
Me: No they don't.
You: I meant in Pathfinder, obviously.
You: Also, Formians can dominate things too.
Me: Only up to CR 4.
You: I meant in 3.5, obviously. (or did you just not read it?)

You are right that I should specify, but, honestly, if I'm using examples, they are probably 3.5, the only reason I'm talking about the Pathfinder Succubus at all is because that was the explicit topic when I came into the conversation.

I have no idea what changes the Pathfinder rules made to Ravids, but based on Succubi and Formians where they just drastically make the monster worse designed in both cases, probably not good.

(I only say Formians now, because that monster you linked, makes Formian Taskmaster objectively not even close to an interesting monster, since it is now another garbage melee monster, except if you use it as a higher leveled one against PCs that are level 4, in which case it instantly becomes a get fucked monster.)

As a cleric, am I a sucker for not bothering with Channel Energy? I mean some of the variants got good stuff, but it seems rather one-trick pony-ish whenever I could just cast spells.

Glancing over the varients, they look pretty unimpressive to burn a turn on, but the base is a decent blast/group heal. Probably not as good as casting the right spell for the situation, but handy if you're out of applicable spells. Some of the feats look pretty good, but maybe aren't better than getting a good metamagic feat instead.

Booze and Kingship variants are good save or lose effects if you go negative channeling, off the top of my head.

Arghhh!!! I am so freaking pissed at the Paizo forums right now!

The most banal "Wrongbadfun" stupid idiotic pedantic people are posting and it makes me want to reach through the screen and choke them until I do not have to put up with them anymore.

*Headdesk*
*Headdesk*
*Headdesk*

Sorry, Sorry, just could not hold that in any more.

Now to contribute.

So, while I agree that Pathfinder is a deeply flawed game I do find it enjoyable in the same way I found 3.5 enjoyable, that is with quite a bit of house rules.

One thing that has been happening to me lately is that I have been purchasing and using more third party content, usually from Dreamscarred Press or Legendary Games.

Does anyone have an 3rd party stuff to recommend for or against?

My favorites so far:

Ultimate Psionics
Mythic Hero's Handbook
Mythic Spell Compendium
Mythic Monstrous Manual

Now please note, I am not trying to claim these are perfect, however I think given the inherent flaws in the base system they are done well.

I haven't been to paizo in a long time so I don't know the significance of the headdesking but if you're looking for3rd party content I'd have to ask what kind of material you are looking for. Most of the 3rd party stuff I use is dreamscarred though I've idea mined other material.

Spheres of Power is an attempt to redo the magic system with less crap to remember. I like it, it may not be as liked by those who think a good wizard should be the balance point to aim for.

I like Path of War, but that's DSP so you're probably already familiar with it. The Broken Blade discipline can get absurd damagewise though.

There is some really good 3rd Party Pathfinder stuff out there.

Legendary Games make some fun add-ons, I especially like the materials they did for Carrion Crown and some of the monsters. Their Sword & Planet AP sounds like fun, haven't seen it yet.
Dreamscarred Press has been named, meshes pretty well with official PF materials. I think they are doing Arcanum classes right now, haven't seen those yet.
Super Genius Games (now Rogue Genius Games) did a few nifty things if you like to sprinkle a few unique loot drops or advancement options into your game, but overall it's very hit or miss.
Rite Publishing is very much the same story, but I have to mention the glorious package of crazy that is Faces of the Tarnished Souk (together with Coliseum Morpheuon), some of the most memorable NPC writeups I've seen in a while. The 1001 Spells supplement is obviously full of strange and broken crap, but a nice source for a unique spellbook or something.
Alluria Publishing did a pretty cool underwater setting with rules for buoyancy and drift (which I felt were pretty unwieldy to use) and some ideas on how to represent 3D combat. It seems they didn't do anything else, but Cerulean Seas stuff is worth checking out.

Dreamscarred's version of blue magic is called Akashic Mysteries. It's not bad, but there are flaws. For example the Guru is based around dealing nonlethal damage and doesn't start with a way to bypass immunity until later. There is a similar problem with the psionic Dread class, except with fear. Also I am irritated that they are behind schedule on both Akashic and path of war, and they just started a patreon to beg for more money. My previous endorsement of DSP is wearing thin lately.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Dreamscarred's version of blue magic is called Akashic Mysteries. It's not bad, but there are flaws. For example the Guru is based around dealing nonlethal damage and doesn't start with a way to bypass immunity until later. There is a similar problem with the psionic Dread class, except with fear. Also I am irritated that they are behind schedule on both Akashic and path of war, and they just started a patreon to beg for more money. My previous endorsement of DSP is wearing thin lately.

Isn't DSP made up of like five dudes? When you're rapidly becoming the biggest 3rd party publisher of the biggest(?) game on the market, you gotta get capital somewhere.

Maybe I am being a little harsh. Just butthurt that my subscriptions are a bit behind.

doe Paizo still publish things? I am so out of the loop the moment I stop playing a game I sometimes realize in wonder that that game still exists.

Like, a lot of things. They recently published their 100th adventure path book.

Rawbeard wrote:doe Paizo still publish things? I am so out of the loop the moment I stop playing a game I sometimes realize in wonder that that game still exists.

Absolutely. They are squeezing blood out of that stone at a comparable rate to when 4th edition D&D was new. Last month saw what are technically twenty published releases. Now, to be fair: literally nine of those are variant covers for 2 issues of a comic book. So if you don't count the two whole issues of Pathfinder Comics that came out last month, there were only nine releases. And most of those were minor accessories. CDs of background music, a deck of druid themed cards, a battle map with some random wintery shit drawn on it, a tie-in novel, and shit like that.

But there was still an Agents of Evil Pathfinder Player's Companion (book of power creep options for evil characters plus some rants about playing bad guys, like Champions of Ruin or AEG's Evil, but Oathfinder flavored), a campaign setting book for Cheliax (it's a devil cult country for you to be an edgelord in), a stand-alone adventure, and part four of the Hell's Rebels adventure path. That's like four "real" releases for the game. Two adventures, a campaign setting bit and a power creep book. That's a full release schedule for D&D. We haven't seen more than that in a month (unless you count the d20 boom) since the early nineties.

Now... the Cheliax Campaign Setting book is a 64 page softcover pamphlet that they want to sell to you for $23. And Agents of Evil is seriously thirty two pages and sells for eleven bucks. There isn't a lot of "value" for these. They are very minimalist works that are being sold in low volumes for high margins. These are the kinds of books that any game writer could hack out in a week and a half, which looks to be what they are doing.

But they exist. Which is more than can be said about 5th edition D&D supplements.

-Username17

I guess it's something. should keep the fans happy. Huh, so I guess the current theme is Hell/Cheliax in their metaplot. is it any good? The Cheliax book looks like filler even by setting book standards, but if the AP is decent it might make me look for a group again.

Cheliax would be an awesome concept if there was room for more moral flexibility in the game. Frank's description is overly simplified but not incorrect unfortunately.

A basic rule of thumb is to check how well know the writer is for any given Pathfinder product. If it's someone you've never heard of it's probably a good product. If it's one of the established Pathfinder writers then it probably is not.

We won't get into how Pathfinder treats transgendered people other than they've somehow managed to offend both the /pol/ crowd AND actual transgendered people, but neither are hard to actually offend...

Can we do so, because I have no idea why the 4chan boards constantly whine about the transsexual people in the game.

FYI it isn't really even hard to offend people because all that does, is traveling to a land where the sensibilities of the people you're offending. Do not want to be crossed. So y'know. Being offensive isn't even something that most people should be proud of most of the time.

Let me put it this way, whining because there are trans npcs is retarded. Whining because on of the designers tried to make literally an entire race both transsexual and transgendered at the same time can be reasonable.

I don't even understand how having an entire race of transsexuals would work. Is this the same as being like a 3.5 changeling?

It is the pathfinder version of the changeling which is less shapechanger and more "yo momma was a hag".

Also, posting on my phone sucks docks.

Is this about the new iconic's backstory or some new thing?

AcidBlades wrote:I don't even understand how having an entire race of transsexuals would work.

Succubi/incubi?

In their case, I think the idea works, in that the race is noted to use sex to advance it's goals. A race that can mimic whatever fantasies their particular mark might have makes a lot of sense. The only (potential) downside would be any perceived trans-people = deviants implications.