Pathfinder

@1524 Oh, damn it, I just had a busy weekend trying to corral an utterly bonkers toddler and trying to go over Occult Adventures (I got the PDF), and they drop an errata bomb on me?

Damn you, PAIZO!

How about this - folks can tell me what some of the more egregious errata are, and I'll review them between trying to have a session tonight (big boss fight coming!), reading more of Occult Adventures, and that whole "parenting" thing. I'll try to use that extra time to update my resume.

Though if they're finally nerfing aasimars, good. Such a blatant cheese pick.

Oh, while I can't give a full review of Occult Adventures, I can give a review of the kineticist, since I did get to read that entire section (I got partway through medium, but not enough to get a handle on it yet).

So, first, let's state the obvious - they took elemental benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender, mixed in some good ol' telekinesis, and made it into a Pathfinder class. I don't mind this, and Paizo can't obviously say that for copyright reasons, but we'll be up front about this. I think the most obvious case of this is when you look at the pyrokineticist. You get to the part where the upgrade to basic pyrokinesis is blue fire, and you go "Yup, Azula, right there."

In terms of rules, it feels like this is how Paizo finally came to terms with a constitution-based casting class. Your abilities are somewhat limited by what element you focus on (though you can either incorporate more elements as you level or you can double-down and improve your starting element), and how much you can use your most powerful abilities depends on how much "burn" (which functions like temporary damage, except it can only be healed by a night's rest) you accept. There is a limit on how much burn you can take at a time (based on level), but you also have the ability to take more time to mitigate burn - reduce burn costs by 1 with a move action, 2 with a full-round action, and by 3 if you take an extra move action the following round after the full-round action.

Consequently, this, combined with the fact that several of your moves power up if you have taken burn (regardless of whether you took that burn from the current ability or previously used abilities) made me realize that there is one other major source for the class' abilities - fighting games and anime. Depending on whether you were more hardcore into anime or games, you probably hear about the reducing burn by spending time to focus your powers as either "Kamehame ha!" or "Shinkuu hadouken!". And if you're anything like me, you're probably hoping to find out if there is an archetype for either kineticist or monk (or both) that would allow you to basically build a fighting game character. At the very least, should I get to the archetype section and no such archetype for either exists, I'll do a sample build of kineticist with VMC monk to see how it works.

In terms of combat... I think that kineticist might make the bomber alchemist obsolete. Both scale in damage with more or less the same formula. The major difference is that the kineticist has no limit to how much they can use a burn 0 ability, and the basic attack for a kineticist is always a burn 0 ability (for what it's worth, they eventually reduce burn costs as they level, so some of their stronger abilities become cost-free as well). The difference might be similar to the wizard vs. sorcerer debate, where the alchemist has fewer uses but way more variety (many more powers you can take with discoveries, a complete formula book vs. the "utility powers" you get either via level or feat)... but the difference is that sorcerers still have limits to the daily use of their limited pool of abilities (it's just a larger limit than what wizards have). Kineticists' only limit is their burn pool, and not only are there ways around that, but some of their powers aren't limited by that.

One other limit is that they only get a maximum of two blasts (if they take a particular power) of their basic shot, while an alchemist with Fast Bombs can do the "nova bomb" maneuver. That said, that only becomes a clear advantage for the alchemist when they get 3 attacks - level 8 if they took haste as a formula (admittedly, if you're doing a nova build, you probably did take this), level 15 if they didn't.

Oh, one other benefit that an alchemist theoretically has - you can't use the basic elemental blast of a kineticist with the Vital Strike feat chain. Oh, the tragedy. More annoying for the class is that said blast doesn't allow for precision damage in general, so no multiclass into rogue for you.

Depending on the utility powers taken, I could see this definitely holding its own in battle, and having some use outside of it... I'm going to guess it'll be taken as a low tier 3. Could be fun overall, though I suspect the real fun will be in archetypes.

Has anyone given Pathfinder online a try?

Ye, Kineticist allows for fighting game characters like MK ninjas

Anyhoo, I don't remember all race errata besides Mask of Stony Demeanor's price increase(which is a lot) and age table fix. Since tengu didn't really get anything about them changed and my main character in PFS is tengu so I haven't had really need to check :D

Anyway, next AP after Hell's Rebels & Hell's Vengeance: Strange Aeons

Yeah, they are apparently finally doing lovecraftian ap

Fuck Mortal Kombat ninjas. I could already half-ass that with quinggong monk or certain ninja/rogue builds... and I hated Mortal Kombat. I want to pull out some of the truly ridiculous stuff, like the Psycho Crusher or Maximum Spider, or go uber-ridiculous like Gamma Crush, Dragon Install, or Sekkajin.

While I have to check out some of those archetypes and where the rules might meet, I could see lots of potential for a Full-Contact Magic fighter with kineticist. I still want to check out some of the other classes - I only got as far with the medium to tell that their default spell casting is only slightly less limited than a paladin or ranger's casting, which tells me very little beyond the fact that their spells are a supplement to what they do, not the focus.

Rude man

Anyhoo, kineticist archetypes include blood bender from avatar, one that uses mind instead of body and one that is all about annihilation xD

32: Let's see. It looks like they're ARG changes - the Bestiary ones seem to have come from a while back, but the PRD was only just updated. Possibly the most controversial stuff:

• Oracle FCB - "Add +1/2 to the oracle's level for the purpose of determining the effects of one revelation" has now become "Add 1/6". The same nerf has been applied to some Sorcerer FCBs.
• Scarred Witch Doctor no longer uses Con as its main casting stat - it now goes back to Int and gets "treat your Int score as 2 points higher for casting purposes" (in a nutshell).
• Some are complaining about the change to Aasimar / Tiefling ages, but I have no idea what's going on.
• Also, some item called the mask of stony demeanor had its price fixed.

For the ACG errata, there's too much to cover. Stuff which people are apparently most annoyed about:

• Slayers are annoyed that you can't Swift action Coup-de-grace anymore with Merciless Butchery;
• Shamans are annoyed that Spirit Talker (pick a free Hex when you prepare spells) now only lasts for one hour instead of the whole day;
• Magi are annoyed that using Arcane Deed to get the Swashbuckler's Precise Strike no longer works (since you have zero actual swashbuckler levels) - but that's actually what errata are supposed to be for;
• Divine Protection's "Cha to all saves" is now "Cha to 1 save once per day", leaving Oracles of all kinds frothing at the mouth;
• Slashing Grace now only works if you have the other hand unoccupied, a la Dervish Dance, disappointing TWF dex-builds everywhere;
• Battle Cry now only grants its bonus to fear saves;
• (Something about Steadfast Personality now being useless.)

Apparently the complaints come in several flavours: the "this didn't need to be nerfed", the "this needed to be nerfed but they overdid it", and the "this needed to be nerfed but you went and broke something else completely unrelated instead".

edited 11th Mar '16 9:26:20 PM by Pyrite

@1530 Maybe harsh, but I so seldom get to work blue.

For those archetypes... I'd have to double-check, but I think you don't even need an archetype to bloodbend; you just need one particular higher-level water kineticist power (at least, I thought I remembered seeing that as an option on the base class list). Though that would hardly be the first archetype that just goes overboard with something the base class could already do.

@1531 Well... to go over that stuff:

Reducing the effect of oracle/sorcerer FCBs: The problem is that it's too sweeping. For some revelations/bloodline abilities (I would presume that bloodrager FCBs would also be similarly affected), the old "+1/2 effective level" bonus is perfectly fine (take the stormborn sorcerer's Thunderstaff power, which would require taking the FCB four times to get a full bonus out of it). Others, though, the nerf makes sense (such as the flame oracle's Form Of Flame power, which just needs a few levels of FCB to basically become an all-day elemental form).

The problem is that many of those powers should be divided into greater and lesser powers (similar to how rogue talents are divided), but the designers forgot to do that when they made those classes. If they had, they'd ideally make the FCB increase effective level by +1/2 for a lesser power or +1/6 for a greater power. That level of errata would pretty much be a new edition, though.

Scarred Witch Doctor uses Int now: I suspect they did this because kineticist happened - there's now a stronger mechanical method to do a constitution-based "caster." I would only incorporate this rule into an existing campaign if I were to allow a SWD player completely restat their character... that said, even with that bonus to effective intelligence for purposes of spellcasting, that feels like a big nerf to an archetype that didn't need it.

Aasimar/tiefling ages: I suspect this has something to do with individual campaigns. I dunno; I seldom have aging come up in my games. About the most I could say is that it might affect who's eligible for the Breadth of Experience feat, but that's not exactly the feat I most worry about.

Price change on the Mask of Stony Expression: Given that it gave a +10 bonus to lying and a +5 to feint attempts (though a -5 to pass secret messages... which could be easily mitigated by just taking the mask off for five seconds), the fact that it was only 500 gp was kinda low. I'd have to see the new price to say whether or not it was a fair adjustment, but it was on the low side for its effects. Some price bump was needed (I'd say no greater than up to 2500 gp, though).

Slayers can't swift-action coup de grace: Good. That was always absurd, especially with a class that gets sneak attack dice. They never should have had that in the first place, and it was one of the most blatant cases of power creep in there. That said, know why power creep happens? People like it. This was bound to be a controversial move.

Limit on Spirit Talker feat: The limit isn't quite so bad as you present it; you can spend 10 minutes to activate it at any time, not just when you commune for spells.

This nerf kind of makes more sense - in the old wording, it's like an extra powerful version of the Extra Hex feat (which is normally limited by your spirit choice, and locked in once you take the feat). The only reason to ever take Extra Hex was that you can only take Spirit Talker once.

It was another case of power creep. That said, the ability isn't too overpowered; it was just too cheap. I would have preferred that they applied the nerf but also introduce the feat Spirit Medium (suggested name) that required Spirit Talker as a prerequisite and worked like the old Spirit Talker feat.

Arcane Deed no longer gives access to Precise Strike: The problem with this ruling is that it's completely inconsistent. Arcane Deed suddenly requires swashbuckler levels to work? Then either you're multiclassing as a magus/swashbuckler, or you can never take that arcana - the whole purpose of the deed is that your magus level counts as your swashbuckler level for purposes of that deed. Also, it's far from the most powerful thing a magus can do with his arcane pool (hey there, pool strike). Heck, given that the damage in question is precision (and thus not multiplied on a critical), it's probably one of the weaker choices you could make. I want to know the justification of that errata.

Divine Protection becomes a 1/day feat instead of Always On: I was once denied when I asked my GM to take this feat. He pointed out that my level 3 oracle had an 18 charisma. This would have meant that I would have spent one feat to get twice the effect that someone else could have gotten out of 3 feats (namely, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, and Great Fortitude). In short, yes, this was an uber-cheese feat that was guaranteed to be nerfed sooner or later. You shouldn't be shocked when the most blatant cases of power creep are walked back.

Also, side note, while oracles are the ones most obviously nailed by this nerf, I know several paladins, warpriests, and clerics (who didn't get quite as ridiculous a buff, but still had builds to enjoy this feat) who also bemoan this ruling.

Slashing Grace feat is for those using one weapon only: I just don't get why you'd even bother nerfing two-weapon fighting styles, one of the most feat-intensive setups you could imagine. This was practically a feat tax on a feat-hungry setup as is. And the extra damage is piddling anyhow, compared to what two-handed users are doing (let alone the spell slingers in the party). Awful, awful nerf.

Battle Cry feat no longer gives a +1 to attack: Skald and bloodrager, come on down, time to take your nerfs! Okay, strictly speaking, those two aren't the only ones who could take this feat, but they were realistically the only ones who would (inspire courage is much better for bards to use and overlaps with the to-hit bonus; most other classes wouldn't bother with the prerequisites).

This matters most with low-level groups, where every +1 counts. Higher-level groups probably have access to other, better morale bonuses to hit (inspire courage, bless, heroism, etc.). I wouldn't have bothered; you have to spend a feat to give a temporary bonus, and one that fairly quickly lags in usefulness. This wasn't a power creep case; why bother?

Steadfast Personality feat is now useless? Well, first things first, how many Will saves weren't mind-affecting effects? Second, it's a limited version of Divine Protection (only affecting one save, not all three, but with the bonus of having no prereqs), and I can see how a feat that would potentially overshadow Iron Will would get nerfed. Though without details, I couldn't say just how much that nerf was needed.

@Mage: Haven't you done Pathfinder online? I seem to remember some guy with ice powers.

Can't comment on the others, but the main complaint about the change to Divine Protection is that it got nerfed excessively (now it's apparently useless), while the complaint about Merciless Butchery was that it was already circumstantial enough - and that it was a nerf to a martial class.

*shrug* I don't know, I'm just reporting here. Anyway, I hear that the bigger concerns are concerning the idea of errata turning into balance patches instead of correcting actual errors, and these changes being implemented without consulting the userbase. (And the usual "martials don't get nice things" complaint, but that's old news.)

edited 3rd Aug '15 7:48:51 PM by Pyrite

Does that change actually effect the Paladin class feature, or JUST the feat that mimics it?

But yes Divine protection was freaking OP as hell.

Just the feat. (I thought the Paladin one was Divine Grace.)

edited 3rd Aug '15 6:42:07 PM by Pyrite

@1534 Hmm... I think this might be a "per campaign" thing. In one campaign I'm in, we so seldom have to make saves that a "one/day" bonus to saves is no different than a permanent save bonus - bad guy mages like to use "no save" powers on my party a ton. I've been in others though where saves were made every round, sometimes multiple times per round.

Perhaps a more fair way would have been to grant that save bonus once per day on each type of save, or maybe just a simple 3/day on the bonus. I wouldn't say it's a useless feat right now (face it, when you need to make that save-or-suck roll, you hoard pluses like they're going out of style), but certainly it'd be lower on my list than Iron Will right now.

For Merciless Butchery... wait, circumstantial? Whoa there. We all know just how many save-or-suck spells there are. So many of them can result in an enemy that's theoretically open for a coup de grace. Sleep, deep slumber, hold person/monster, charm person/monster, dominate person/monster... that's just the CRB list of spells that could render someone vulnerable to a coup de grace. Yes, you need either a magic item capable of duplicating those spells or a friendly caster, but it's far less situational than it first appears.

For the other part:

Oh, I always love hearing the call of the self-righteous newb. It sounds like desperation and a lack of historical context.

In other words, news flash: errata have been used as balance patches since the days of AD&D at least. Sure, stuff was sometimes presented as being "correcting errors," but the "error" was a poorly designed element and not a typo or the like (not that we were free of those back in the day). About the only thing I think you could actually hammer Paizo on is that they didn't bother with the pretense of pretending the errata were just error corrections.

As for player feedback... well, yes and no. They didn't do an announcement about "Oh, we're thinking about doing these changes, what are folks' opinions on it?" But geez, look how much people discuss how good or bad things are in various forums - that is feedback, and Paizo is collecting it. It's a bit passive aggressive on all sides, and they should have a more forward and robust way of handling it, but we've had plenty of chances to make our voice known... the problem isn't that we didn't have the chance; the problem is that we didn't know it was happening.

I think the sheer volume of errata in this case, and the stark nature of many cases of it, show that their current method of playtesting needs an overhaul. I'm not sure if the open sourcing is the problem or if they're getting good feedback and just not incorporating it well. But a bunch of this stuff needed to be caught in the playtest phase, and it didn't.

Switching gears a bit, whew, had a brutal session last night. The GM has been stingy with the magical items and not always clear on what certain things in the Bestiary mean (it's my newbie game), and it came to a head last night. For one, we were up against a whole bunch of golems, and nobody had a weapon that could overcome their DR. We had to really pile on hard and fast to get through each one. Worse was a ghost that was capable of possessing the golems (before you ask, no ghost touch weapons either, so outside of the sole sorcerer, we were doing a whole bunch of reduced damage). It had been established that these golems ran on souls, so I could deal with the ghost jumping into them. The big problem was that the GM let the ghost move to a golem, possess it (as per the magic jar spell, a full-round action), and then have the golem move and take a full attack. I immediately called BS on this, and the GM said "yeah, what are you going to do about it?"

Like I said, I don't mind when opponents can go past what the RAW can do, but only if the players are allowed to do the same thing. The whole "two move actions and two full-round actions" thing was so blatantly unfair that I was all "screw it" and showed just how much someone with summon monster spells can screw with action economy: I used summon monster II to get an air elemental that did all of the side objectives needed to finish the battle (including grabbing a cursed crown off of a pedestal that had been trapped on the floor - good thing the elemental had 100 feet of perfect maneuverability fly speed per round), all while buffing the party to heck and back with my own turns (with a brief respite to cast remove curse on the crown, which meant that we could kill the ghost).

That said, all of those extra attacks it got from its extra full round actions? The fighter bit it right at the end, one round before the ghost itself (the BBEG of the scenario) went down. Keep in mind, this is the "newbie" game I talk about occasionally - one of the newbies, her first character death. The other newbie went kinda crazy-go-nuts over the whole thing, down to demanding dibs on the crown my character had done all the work on "because (she) just saw the fighter die!" I had to break that up right quick - one, she didn't do any of the work acquiring or de-cursing the crown (all me and my elemental). Two, it was a crown giving a bonus to wisdom and intelligence, and she's a sorcerer (so, you know, buffing the two mental stats she doesn't care about). Three, my character had been repeatedly getting shafted on magical items, and this was pretty blatantly the GM trying to make up for it. I told her that nobody gets freebies just because they watched someone else die. She was a bit petulant about it, but she calmed down considerably in a bit.

Then, of course, we turn to the GM. This is his first campaign as GM, so he is admittedly new to balancing. That said, even before things turned bloody, I was straight up in pointing out that the BBEG was just taking the action economy and having its dirty way with it. And it showed, when said BBEG focused all its absurd array of actions on the fighter and killed her. He knew that was an Oh, Crap! moment, because he dusted off Chekhov's Gun and used it to pull a Deus ex Machina raise dead spell out of an NPC (with the caveat that we need to rest a good while before heading back out into the world). I'm going to talk to the GM about this one; I think he needs a primer on how to buff up a potential BBEG within the rules, rather than just break things apart. Sure, I might be able to handle it, but the newbies? Eh, not so much. Though the realization that resurrective spells were available did calm down the newbie that had freaked out before.

Funny thing: theorycrafters love building builds in a vacuum. What can I say?

*shrug* Again, I'm just reporting what I'm reading, so I'm going to assume that you didn't mean it as a personal snipe. But if you are, then I'm gonna... well, just ignore it anyway, because what can I do?

To be fair, you are reporting on angry Internet comments

True. (And that's why I'm trying out 5E.)

Back to the story, 32: For context: what kind of DR was on those golems, and what level were your characters?

Golems by default have DR adamantine. Or hardness iirc. Some meant to be easier might have something like slashing, but thats rarer.

@1538 I promise, it wasn't a personal snipe - for one, not my style. For another, as you said, you were just reporting.

@1540 Well, they were custom jobs, so I can't just point to the Bestiaries and say "that kind." We didn't make the Knowledge (arcana) check by enough to know the precise DR, though we made it enough to know that adamantine was required to overcome it.

The problem in regards to determining the precise DR is that most of the attacks were either comically weak or so overwhelming that a bunch was going to bleed through anyhow. The only "edge case" was when I shot an arrow that did 6 damage (considering I had the advantages of inspire courage +2 and arcane strike for another +2, I had a crap roll). The GM said that "scraped the paint" - I wasn't clear if that description was meant that the damage was solely superficial or if it meant that only one point squeaked through. So my guess is that it either was 5/adamantine or 10/adamantine for DR.

It's probably worth noting that we handled most of the golems (the ones that weren't possessed) by knocking pillars on them. We frequently have to use the environment to our advantage.

For our level, at the time, the party was level 7 (we did level after the fight). That said, based on the CRB recommended wealth levels, we're equipped roughly like we're level 5.

Hmmm, I think you're right about the DR/Adamantine.

I guess Power Attack or Deadly Aim would be the traditional ways of "bypassing" the DR before you get adamantine weapons. Even so, the "2 Moves + 2 Full Attacks" business was still worse. Ouch.

Power Attack was, in fact, one of the three ways that we took care of the golems. The others were sneak attack (constructs are not immune to precision damage unless specified in their description, and these were not protected from it) and spells (their spell resistance was much lower than we first anticipated).

I just realized how much it depresses for me to read other people's bragging stories(seriously, pretty much all non subject threads on this forum sections are bragging threads xD) when I'm unable to get my own ones :P I mean, roll20 game this week got moved to later date and I can't get pfs game going... I'm way too addicted to this hobby to be happy that I'll have games at weekend.

Heh. Level 7. In our latest game, our DM decided it would be interesting if we were all level one NP Cs. It's amazing how quickly the game becomes a resource focused RTS/village sim when you can't go and fight things. We've literally been amassing influence and goods so we can employ/improve local NP Cs. One day, we'll eke out enough experience to get a character level.

We have the stipulation that we can't retrain into a PC level until we have a certain number of NPC levels.

edited 4th Aug '15 12:23:46 PM by Zeromaeus

Anyway, huh, paizo's rpg superstar thing is starting again.

Dunno whether I should even try since I've never done design stuff :P And I have no clue what would be unique idea for wondrous item since there are crap ton of those already

Not that anyone gives a shit about what I feel like, nobody does and everyone just ignores me anyway

edited 4th Aug '15 12:45:33 PM by SpookyMask

I hope you don't think I was bragging, Spooky - that session was agonizing and more than a little frustrating. Nothing that can't be dealt with, but I've had much better sessions with that group.

As for Paizo's RPG Superstar... I've been considering by applying to be an Editing Superstar, but I bet that'll go over like a clockwork golem at a druid convention.

edited 4th Aug '15 1:05:39 PM by 32_Footsteps

Bragging? I meant by that threads like "Favourite quote" or "Funniest thing" or "Awesome thing I did that was so awesome that gm banned it" etc, threads about game or game system don't usually have bragging

Anyway, what do you mean by editing superstar? .-.

edited 4th Aug '15 1:29:56 PM by SpookyMask

So anyway on happier tone, player's guide for Hell's Rebels is out

It kinda seems like Rebelion Manager 2015 :D

And turns out that main antagonist of Hell's Vengeance is LG group called Glorious Reclamation led by a paladin of Iomedae. I suppose that is to be expected for evil AP xD

edited 13th Aug '15 3:20:33 PM by SpookyMask