Shade of the Uskwood

Tvarog's page

208 posts. Alias of phyxion.


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Anguish wrote:
Antariuk wrote:
You guys can snark all you want, the OP certainly has a valid point - the Paizo website is out-of-date.

Good.

I've had enough of "modern" design, thank you very much. While it wouldn't be harmful to support the underline BBCODE, much of modern design seems to be about annoying users, not enabling them.

I don't need menus replaced by clickable lines that throw moving sheets of options. I don't need search boxes and fields that have no border differentiating them from the areas around them. I don't need buttons flattened so they look like part of the background.

User interface should NOT be hidden. Chrome is wrong. Period.

We're living in a world where the arties have taken control over the web and have decreed that a car's steering wheel should be concealed in the trunk, under the spare tire, because "clean!"

It's obnoxious.

So yeah. I won't argue against architectural and infrastructural changes as Paizo sees fit, but as far as appearance is concerned frankly I find this a comforting refuge from the user-hostile environment the web has become in the last three years.

**ADDENDUM**
I'm currently struggling with a philosophical issue. I want to support someone via Patreon. I was two clicks from giving them a significant boost in funding. But various browser plugins proceeded to tell me how intrusive Patreon's site is. They're sharing data with an awful lot of other domains. While I'm used to Google Analytics, there were a half-dozen other nosy demographics networks involved. Sorry, no. Privacy by default. Ask me if you want to share my information. The web has become evil.

I wish I could favorite this more than once.


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Batman doesn't bring people explicitly to the guillotine. Guillotines that eat souls, to boot. And for no better reason than they *may* be related to someone.


Personally, I think it's about time there's finally an Evil iconic.


It's no fun when nearly every enemy (except the trash mooks, of course) mysteriously makes all their saves against your spells but no one else's.

Sub 30% success rate (including the mooks) over 4 levels, with a character specialized in that particular type of magic, is simply not plausible.


IIRC (it's been a long time since I paid any attention to console intricacies) there's a way to copy savegames to a USB drive, and then use a Windows machine to go through and pull out the important files. If it's not a pressing concern I guess it doesn't matter too much :)


I wonder if the savegames are cross-compatible? If so, you could send your save to a PC user, let them fix the problem, then send it back to you. I'm willing to try, if you're interested.


Turin the Mad wrote:
Fake Healer wrote:
Turin the Mad wrote:
Surplus purified water seems to effectively "cap" at 80 and change units/day, and I only want 10 people living there, it's easier to make things work with a goal of 90 water instead of 110.

I didn't notice but, there is a cap on surplus water? Is that per site or overall? I hope it's only per site because that's how momma makes her caps....

Per site. At high daily surplus, I think there might be a workshop capacity limit as well, so it might be worthwhile to plop a cooler adjacent to the workshop for storage for later retrieval.

This may have been stealth-patched, but when I was actively playing I had no trouble at all getting upwards of 250 purified water per day from the hole at Starlight. It was "fun" getting all the purifiers rotated so they didn't clip each other (anecdotally, it seems when two purifiers clip into each other, they only count as one for production rate - but still two for power use).

The cooler idea is great as well, just stop by every day or two and move the product from workshop to cooler. Before you know it you're Scrooge McDuck, Water Lord of the Wasteland. (Although, swimming in bottle caps may be a bad idea.)


Gotta say, I'm really underwhelmed by the first two DLCs announced. Pretty sure there are already mods that do all of that (except maybe the voice acting).

The third one sounds good, but I'm not sure it's worth their asking price. I hope the future DLCs end up being actually worth the price of the season pass (even the original price seems borderline right now).


Fake Healer wrote:
Ah....I see, so 10 +my charisma is the amount of settlers that can be in each settlement. Cool....what if the boost to charisma is temporary, like I am wearing some charisma stuff, get the settlers up and then take off the stuff? Does the number of settlers decrease to account for the new lower charisma?

I don't think it will decrease the settler count unless you do something yourself, such as transfer some to a different settlement (or maybe if raiders kill some). Once they're there, they're basically there forever.


Fake Healer wrote:
So how does it work? Is your charisma score supposed to define on a point for point ratio how many settlers you can have? Because that doesn't seem to make sense to me....I had 19 in Sanctuary even though I had nowhere near a 19 charisma.

Without testing it myself... I've seen the formula described as basically 10 + charisma stat.


Fake Healer wrote:

Another question....I keep finding cans of paint. Can you paint things? If so what can you paint and how? I would love to paint some of the buildings I make or get my outfit/armor all uniform.

Some of the paint cans can be used for a quest in Diamond City. Mostly I think they're just a decent source of oil.


CapeCodRPGer wrote:
Tvarog wrote:
Otherwhere wrote:
As DQ said, it would really be helpful to be able to name our saves.
Or even put the character name in the filename, so you can sort by character.
I don't think you can name the save files on PS4 or Xbox 1.

That's why so many people are saying "it would be nice if we could" or "I wish we could" do that. You can't actually name them on PC, IIRC... you just get the standard location and date/time in-game.


Otherwhere wrote:
As DQ said, it would really be helpful to be able to name our saves.

Or even put the character name in the filename, so you can sort by character.


Fake Healer wrote:
I went into the saved games and started deleting them....I was at it for around 10 minutes. There must have been hundreds of them, all spaced 10 minutes apart and over 3 different characters....I wish I had a clue before I started so I could have checked how much space they took up...I mean shouldn't the game maybe use the same file for it's auto save point repeatedly, replacing the save each time? Seemed a bit excessive to have so many different save points in the game.

Well, given how often scripts glitch out in Bethesda games, it's probably for the best that there are a bunch of saves you can roll back to, when you find a bug that breaks something you consider important (like the main storyline or so).


Sharoth wrote:
Ahhhhh!!! Artillery at last!

I wanted to like this feature so much... but it always takes so long to arrive... the target has almost always moved out of the impact zone. Such a waste.


For Cait, you may want to go back to the Combat Zone. Apparently companion-able NPCs sometimes reset their default location when dismissed.


Otherwhere wrote:

Just saw that the latest patch has gone live.

But the notes no longer say that you can see what tasks a Settler has been assigned to. :(

(sigh) I guess they're leaving that up to the modding community.

CYNIC: Perhaps they're planning to make that part of a DLC, in hopes of better sales.


According to the lore (there's some interesting stuff out there if you dig for it), they use big vats of FEV (forced evolutionary virus) that they find in military and research labs. They kidnap random people, dunk them in the FEV, and voila, out pops a new super mutant. Of course, a lot of those people don't survive the process...


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Turin the Mad wrote:

Don't know if this has been mentioned upthread, but has anyone noticed that super mutants are all male?

Makes the meat bags that much creepier ...

Technically they're neuter. Some can identify as female (see for example, Lily and Tabitha from New Vegas), but that's an affectation as they all lack any secondary sexual characteristics. Basically the same reason they're all buff and ripped.


There's not really any way to completely pacify settlements (as in, prevent nasties from showing up). The "enemy"/"monster" spawns are generated at random when you load the cell (by traveling to it, usually), and apparently do not take into account the level of defenses you have emplaced.

My Taffington settlement ended up being the one chosen for the Railroad safe house replacement, and it was more heavily defended than the BOS base... still got bloodbugs every couple days.

Best I could do was make sure there were enough turrets with good lines of sight to basically instakill them when they do spawn, so they don't have time to murder the civilians.

On the subject of Ashmaker, it's needlessly weak because the legendary fire property doesn't stack with itself the way the legendary bleed does. The bleed effect is even more overpowered because basically nothing is immune to it. No, not even vertibirds. You can murder them at level 1 with a crappy pipe pistol if it has the bleed property and you have enough ammo (and survive the return fire, but this is theoretical anyway :)

There's at least one vendor-sold gauss rifle in-game, once you

Spoiler:
reclaim the Minuteman fort.

There might be another one

Spoiler:
on the BOS airship vendor or the Institute vendor.


Fair enough. In fact, I find the (non-Legendary) assault rifle to be sufficient as a DMR (designated marksman rifle) equivalent, when using the best semiauto mod and the rifleman perk appropriate to your level (about 1 per 4 levels, I find). If one headshot can't kill it, you're probably out of your league. There are exceptions, such as the mirelurk queens and behemoths, but it's a decent guideline.

At least the .50 is worth picking up, still. ;)


If you're end-game enough to be getting an inordinate amount of .50 ammo, I'm curious why you're still using something that shoots .38. At least move up to the combat rifle in .45, if not the assault rifle in 5.56 (which I'd think you would be swimming in by now).

Unless you just prefer the SMG or homemade aesthetic, in which case rock ('n roll) on, you crazy diamond!

I'm really hoping one of the DLCs ends up with something else that can use the 5mm ammo. The minigun's damage is so ridiculously low that it's only worth using if you have one with Explosive or Fire damage on it. I think when I finished (full ranks of Scrounger and max Luck) I had somewhere in the range of 80k rounds, and I'd have started ignoring it entirely if it wasn't both weightless and at least of minimal value to NPC vendors.


vorpaljesus wrote:
Consider casting Slow to limit the number of full attacks they can make.

From personal experience, you need to be careful when using Slow. If your GM is a jerk, he can take advantage of the ability to make a charge attack even when slowed. Charge plus pounce equals full attack even while slowed, because it's an exception that allows a full attack as part of a (standard action) charge instead of the normal full-round action.

As counterintuitive as the idea is, the rules do support it (Golarion does NOT operate on real-world physics, nor anything approaching them).

PFSRD Slow spell description wrote:
Creatures affected by this spell are staggered and can take only a single move action or standard action each turn, but not both (nor may it take full-round actions).

Limited to single standard action OR a single move action.

PFSRD Movement during a charge description wrote:
If you are able to take only a standard action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed) and you cannot draw a weapon unless you possess the Quick Draw feat. You can't use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action on your turn.

Exception: can still use charge even when limited to single standard action.

PFSRD Pounce (Ex) universal monster ability description wrote:
When a creature with this special attack makes a charge, it can make a full attack (including rake attacks if the creature also has the rake ability).

If you can charge (and you can, thanks to the above exception), you can make a full attack as part of that charge.


Bravo, Guru-Meditation. What you have done to the english language (and your readers' mental states) shall echo through the ages.

;)


In my experience, you can get plenty of bone at most any super mutant spawn location (in their gore bags). Same with acid at bloodbug spawns (can also be found in gore bags). The most convenient point I found was Medford Memorial Hospital, just north of Taffington Boathouse (which is a possible settlement, thus a decently safe fast travel point once you've put in some defenses). The canal area immediately northeast of Taffington usually spawns about 6-8 bloodbugs, and the hospital is immediately north of that. Easy to clean out in a few minutes, plus plenty of respawning gore bags. If you have any of the "extra caps" or "extra ammo" perks, you can find those in the gore bags too... and they're all over the place, hiding in plain sight.


Abraham spalding wrote:
Hama wrote:
And the institute could convert you into a synth.

How do you know they didn't?

If they could memory resurrect Nick Valentine why couldn't they thaw, drug, and brain dump you into a synth and then put the synth back in the vault?

What if you are the reproductive model and they just needed to deep cover you?

Well, there is the fact that all synths (IIRC, even the Brahmin ones) show up in VATS as having energy resistance even when not wearing armor, and the main character pretty clearly does not have that trait.

Still, if you prefer that headcanon, you can just pretend they hacked the PipBoy you found as well so it doesn't show your own energy resistance.


CapeCodRPGer wrote:
Tvarog wrote:


Sided with Minutemen, so the only faction I had to wipe out was the kidnappers; this was on the third and final playthrough. On a previous one I got the other 3 endings by reloading before the decision point.

I am trying to get all PS4 trophies. Where is the decision point? I want to save right before that so I don't have to do other play throughs.

I believe I saved right before finishing Hunter/Hunted (after locating the courser but before entering the building to kill him). During the next quest, The Molecular Level, is when you have to choose a faction, and I'm not sure you can do anything useful once TML has started to change your faction choice. If you need to get a faction to like you in order to choose them for the ending, do it before TML starts.


Our oracle has basically no control spells that aren't single-target (with Will or Fort saves, both of which these guys are good at) or fire based (such as Burning Disarm, which is not so good because the cleric/paladin know we have a focus on fire damage and have buffed against it in the past). Same thing with damage. It's not that we want him to be restricted to healing, that's just the situation we're in for this fight.

At the moment, we're only facing the cleric and paladin (and golem). However, long-term we need to pacify the area, ideally before our allies arrive. There are still militia (basically level 1-3 rabble, from what we can tell, probably only a few dozen remaining) and emplaced defenses such as siege weapons and walls, that will pose a problem. If we don't clear them, our allies are going to take pretty heavy losses, and we're (probably) going to get reamed for it afterwards.

If we just hide and wait for our allies, there will be enemy reinforcements at some point. We don't know when or what, but I'm figuring the quicker we take out the cleric/paladin the better position we'll be in when their buddies show up. As stacked as the fight already is against us, I'm not happy with our odds if we allow the enemy time to reinforce. On top of this, our characters are all pretty gung-ho for the cause, so we're all very much in favor of attacking as long as long as it's not completely suicidal. We're even okay with casualties, as long as we can win and recover the bodies.

We don't actually need the room they're holed up in, but if we don't clear them it's an additional flank we'll need to cover while we clear the other defenses; I'm assuming they'll be harrying us as much as possible (I would, in their situation). We've already engaged them at least once each in the past several hours in-game, so there's basically no chance of hiding our identities/capabilities as long as they live.

During our last encounter, we were split up to take out other priority targets; IIRC the summoner was engaged with the paladin and the cleric dismissed his eidolon, driving him off and giving them the chance to retreat indoors.

We actually did manage to take out a couple of other significant NPCs during the initial attack, I'd say we reduced their collective combat efficiency by about 1/3 (not counting the golem). If we'd been close enough to support each other I think we could have won the last fight even with the eidolon gone. This all kicked off earlier than planned, because the cleric got spooked before we were ready to make our move (we were all disguised and infiltrating the town). Plus we did something stupid to get their attention, inadvertently (that was ultimately my fault).

Our antipaladin is not super DPS focused, but is all-round decent, and his own smite will let him face off with the paladin, at least to hold him off while we burn down the cleric.

The cleric and paladin are pretty well defensively optimized, so it's a job even landing hits. Summons aren't really going to help that with their normal attack routines, we'll be depending on their specials (such as the mud and psionic elementals) to help there.

I'm very doubtful about us being able to shut down the golem or even co-opt it; it's apparently a historical guardian of the keep (so the cleric and paladin probably aren't giving it orders), even though it would have to squeeze to leave the room it's in. It can control the whole room with 10ft reach plus a slow effect.

I think they'll just stay bunkered down inside the golem room until their reinforcements arrive, at which point the situation will get significantly worse for us - if their allies show up before ours do, it will mean they have at least one more caster, likely arcane, on their side. That means they'll have more buffs and damage available, and maybe more control spells. If their reinforcements are anything close to on par with the cleric/paladin, we've lost the battle at that point, because our allies are going to be slaughtered when they show up.

Basically, we already screwed up by letting them get away once. In-character, we don't want to let them live at all, but we realized it's suicide to attack with no (daily) resources. Out of character, we're still trying to decide if it's worth trying again (ie, do we even have a chance), and it looks like we do. With a few tricks, I'd put our odds at about 60%, better if the golem is played dumb (which I believe Int -- should be). It's all going to hinge on the first 2 rounds and whether their allies show up in time to help them.


Oracle Spells Known (CL 6th; concentration +11)
3rd (4/day)—cure serious wounds, neutralize poison, remove curse
2nd (6/day)—cure moderate wounds, flaming sphere (DC 17), hold person (DC 17), resist energy, lesser restoration, scorching ray
1st (8/day)—bane (DC 16), bless, burning hands (DC 16), command (DC 16), cure light wounds, detect undead, infernal healing[ISWG]
0 (at will)—bleed (DC 15), create water, detect magic, mending, read magic, resistance, stabilize
Special Attacks channel positive energy 6/day (DC 18, 3d6)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 6th; concentration +11)
1/day—disguise self

Sorcerer Spells Known (CL 6th; concentration +11)
3rd (4/day)—summon monster III
2nd (6/day)—blindness/deafness (DC 17), bull's strength, invisibility
1st (8/day)—burning disarm (DC 16), cause fear (DC 16), color spray (DC 16), sleep (DC 16), summon monster I
0 (at will)—daze (DC 15), detect magic, ghost sound (DC 15), jolt[UM], mage hand, penumbra[UM], prestidigitation
Bloodline Abyssal
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 6th; concentration +11)
1/day—dancing lights, darkness, faerie fire

Not as weird as I thought, nor as light on spell slots.

Aether elementals (and Psionic elementals from TOHC - even one reflected hit on the golem will make a huge difference) seem to be the best tactic so far. No swarms seem to be available on the SM lists at all, from what I can find on the PFSRD.

The only issue now is what the "good guys'" reinforcements turn out to be, and how quickly they can arrive. I suspect they'll all be well buffed against fire, so it's good that we have a source of different energy damage. Lantern archons would rock, but since we cap out at SM3 (thus one per spell slot, and max 4 a day) they're a little inefficient. The extra blasphemy is delicious, though.


I'll definitely put more time into it when the DLCs come out (I really should have waited, but the power armor thing was just too delicious). Skyrim got me for a bit under 600 hours (and I may still go back at some point), I'm sure I'll get close to that on FO4 when all's said and done. So far though, it just doesn't have the depth to earn a replay from me, IMO.

I was seriously disappointed with the resolution options for the kidnapping storyline, so I didn't see a whole lot of reason to replay it with different characters. I basically did one male melee/brute force/jerk playthrough and one female/ranged/helpful and that's all I need to cover the bases.


Gameplay itself is pretty decent, and I have to reiterate that they really did make power armor feel amazing to use. But on the whole, FO4 is such a step back from FO:NV that it makes me sad.


The aspect that really bothers me is how bad the PC interface is. It's almost like they didn't test it at all, and figured whatever works okay for consoles will work for PC as well.

Specifically: the conversation options being frequently misleading (what shows up on screen usually doesn't come close to matching what your character actually says), the settlement object placement not having snap options, settlement population having no interface for assigning them tasks or beds (or seeing what they're already assigned to if you don't happen to be looking at them both already), settlements having very little to no feedback on why they're unhappy (happiness may still not go above ~60 even if they have enough beds/defenses/food/water), and the lack of a "remove attachment" option (you have to replace it with something else every time).


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Krensky wrote:
GreyWolfLord wrote:
Krensky wrote:
DM Beckett wrote:
Up until recently, (and I guess that even only matters if you accept Disney's word on that), the EU WAS canon.

No, it wasn't.

Before Disney's statement canon was Episodes I through VI and the Clone Wars movie and show.

Actually, in that regard, you had different levels of Canon.

The Movies were the core Canon.

The show was actually NOT as Canon as the movies, and was more on the EU level of Canon.

I believe the books were next in Canon.

After that came the Video Games and comics if I recall correctly.

Each level too precedent over the ones below it if there were questions of what was correct.

Completely, utterly, wrong.

Just maybe, you could benefit from reading this: Star Wars Canon. Because GreyWolfLord is in fact correct.


Character is leveled up enough to have every SPECIAL stat naturally at 10 and have all the perks I was interested in (around level 84, I think), then collected all the bobbleheads. (Edit: and the magazine under the crib.)

Sided with Minutemen, so the only faction I had to wipe out was the kidnappers; this was on the third and final playthrough. On a previous one I got the other 3 endings by reloading before the decision point.

Got every achievement on PC Steam version, including the ridiculously nitpicky settlement happiness one. Settlements produce (collectively) around 2500 extra pure water and ~100 extra food per day. Income is taken care of.

Explored the map and unlocked every map marker, exploring all the sites I have any interest in.

Collected enough power armor to have a full set of every type, including raider variants, plus the set I actually use (mostly for exploring underwater and in the Glowing Sea).

Collected every companion (except the kidnapper faction one) and gained their max respect perk.

I really can't think of anything else to do, other than fiddle with mods. 192 hours is enough for now. :)


For those of you who both have a companion and are having carrying capacity issues... if you go into command mode for the companion, you can order them to pick up objects in the world, and that command does not check the companion's carry limit. So, whenever you get full up, drop a bunk of stuff and order your companion to pick it up. Takes a few minutes, and you really should do it in a relatively open and flat area, but you have effectively infinite capacity.

Until they change that in a patch, of course. Which they may already have done. I finished everything (everything) a couple weeks back on my 3rd playthrough and now I'm just waiting for the DLC.


Much appreciate the suggestions.

We'll probably try the invis trick, although I'm not sure we can get away with using lantern archons. At the very least the sorcerer's deity will be very unhappy about it. I'll definitely bring it up. Smoke bombs are a bad idea because none of us can see through it either.

Flying and spider climb are all but useless in the given terrain, due to the room's ceiling (I seem to remember it being 15' up, which the golem at least can still reach).

I wish we had some way to divest them of their holy symbols.


I don't currently have access to the sorcerer's or oracle's spells known lists. I've asked, and will post if I get them. The only ones I know for sure are (sorc) Spider Climb, Invisibility, and SM1/2/3. (Edit: I don't think she knows acid splash.)

The enemies know that Dismissal poofs eidolons (and have used two scrolls of it; we're not sure if the cleric can memorize it or not - he either can't or won't memorize any of the Raise Dead series, which seems really strange for a Good cleric). They know pretty much all of the alchemist's tricks (sadly the recent Skinsend change has seriously reduced his combat efficiency), the antipaladin doesn't really have any nonstandard abilities, and the oracle basically just heals. We don't know how much they know about the sorcerer.

Edit 2: It'd be easier if it was a giant room. ~30x30 isn't much when the golem itself is large, it alone can control about 60% of the room. The room has two 5ft doors. There was a table but the golem walked on it. Walls/floors/ceiling are made of 3ft thick dressed stone. The only teleport we have access to (that I know of) is the summoner, and that appears to be once a day and self only.


I'd appreciate some advice for an encounter we recently had to run away from.

The party is level 6, evil characters, and have approximately half the normal WBL. Alchemist (fire/poison/smoke bombs), antipaladin (mainly guisarme but recently lost that and is temporarily using a morningstar), life oracle, sorcerer with... eccentric spell choices, and synth summoner. We have allies, but they will not arrive in time to matter.

The encounter: stone golem, level 10 paladin (greatsword, I think), level 10 (caster?) cleric; essentially barricaded in a 30x30ft castle room. stone walls / floor / ceiling. Unknown if they have magical equipment. The cleric either already has or currently is in the process of sending for reinforcements, of unknown capability and arrival time.

Assuming we enter the next fight with full resources, this still seems like a pretty much unwinnable fight to me. The alchemist's bombs are the only thing we have that can damage the golem, and he doesn't have enough to kill it (and no expendable alchemy items).

Any suggestions on what we can do other than basically leave and come back when we're better equipped? We'd been making an effort to operate in secret, but it seems like that is entirely blown now.

Edit: We had originally gone after the cleric and paladin while low on daily resources (~20% or so remaining), thinking we could barely pull it off. The golem was a nasty surprise that seems to put all of them handily above our capabilities. The only bright spot is that they seem to be in the defensive, for some reason. We got the impression that the golem was restricted to that particular room, but we could be wrong.


I'm pretty sure that Rocket Bomb in fact CAN be used with Smoke Bomb. Looking at the discovery listing here, it clearly states that

PFSRD wrote:
Discoveries marked with an asterisk (*) do not stack—only one such discovery may be applied to a single bomb.

Smoke Bomb and its kin are marked with asterisks, but Rocket Bomb is not. Unless your game is houseruled, you should absolutely be able to combine them.


I have a character idea but frankly I'm at a loss to implement it. Are there any good ways to significantly increase caster level or otherwise meaningfully boost the effectiveness of Dispel Magic? I'm not aware of anything besides the orange prism ioun stone. Any help would be greatly appreciated.


archmagi1 wrote:
Worst theme song in any bond movie. Decent film. 7/10.

No kidding. That theme made me switch from indifferent about Sam Smith to incandescent hatred of all his works.

The rest of the movie ranged from okay to great, however. Nothing quite up to the "spectacular" rating I'd give Casino Royale, but definitely worth seeing.


Ping...


Additional context:

Slayer already invested resources into the chainsaw and the tech guns. Wouldn't be particularly fair to take those away from him, especially since he wasn't present the last session when I had a minor meltdown and gave up on playing the Oracle.

Control Sorcerer was originally what I was going for, except I used Oracle so someone could actually use the CLW/IH wands the party already had when I joined. Works great when your spells function, not so much otherwise. Anything worth expending a spell slot on will make the save, almost without exception. The only offensive spell I managed to land in the entirety of the tower was a Bestow Curse on the annoying guy.

In previous games, I had a paladin/oracle/sorcerer focused on buff/debuff, specialized in things like Calcific Touch. Derided as being overpowered. Played a druid with a badger AC, focused on healing and buffing the AC. Derided as being overpowered. Played a zen archer with a splash of inquisitor for initiative. Derided as being overpowered.

Played a rogue with cleric levels in Second Darkness, was ineffective at everything. Played a tetori monk in the first book of Carrion Crown, was ineffective at everything. Played a blaster/utility sorcerer in Skull & Shackles, was ineffective at everything.

So, yeah. Might try to write up a barbarian or gunslinger. The whole thing is just really frustrating.


Endoralis wrote:
I will note that Your GM must have been pretty nice already because Eldritch heritage in no way gave you the ability to Affect Constructs with spells. It gives you the Bloodline Power.. not the Arcana.

Not a GM thing at all, but that's definitely odd. I have my older character sheets here, and it's clearly listed. Not the newest one, though. Maybe was a bug in Hero Lab, since it does actually show up as "replaced" now.


The slayer has already claimed the chainsaw and most of the guns so far (actually almost all the tech), I see no reason to believe that will not continue. Paladin might work, but I don't think much so far has been evil, nor will be in the future. Casters don't seem to work for me now - originally I was glitterdusting everything, with the occasional hold person; then at about level 5 everything started making their saves all the time.

I'll definitely look at barbarian, though. The less "convincing" I have to do, the better.


I'm in an Iron Gods game, and the character I've been playing so far has been... not exactly fun. Spirit Guide Oracle with the Impossible bloodline (from Eldritch Heritage) so I could use compulsion spells on the robots and such. Good idea, (I believe) decently optimized, but absolutely horrific luck / statistics at the table. Pretty much everything makes their saves, or the CL check is super high. For the past three levels, I've been able to land less than one spell in three, and that's even counting things like hitting a group of mooks with glitterdust as multiple successes. Without that, it's probably below one in five. Long story short, I don't like being limited to healing and condition removal. So, I'm trying to find something else I can bring in that will be useful. Most of what I remember being lauded as fun to play (that I haven't already tried) seems to have been splattered across the pavement with the nerf steamroller, though. Any suggestions on what could be fun?

Existing party is a synth summoner, a tech focused slayer, and sometimes a fire themed shaman.

Something with good DPR would be nice, especially if it's consistent and not easily negated (the Smoking Tower was seriously annoying).


That's a good question. I'd like to know this too, since I'm in an Iron Gods campaign right now and my oracle needs more spells that actually work.


/checks campaign for heartbeat


James Jacobs wrote:
I've explained numerous times (including my previous post) the many and complex reasons why the APs don't go to 20th level, and I"m not gonna repeat myself here (although I AM trying to get Hell's Rebels to give the PCs a chance to play at 18th level for the end... not sure I can make that happen but I'll try—with this AP having a slightly longer part 2 and part 4 than normal, it might just go a LITTLE further than normal...)...

Fair enough, I wasn't expecting my post to change anything. I just wanted to let you know that some of your customers do want those things.

James Jacobs wrote:

But I do have a few suggestions for groups who are eager to play with the high level content. They both require your GM's help though...

Accelerated XP: Consider switching to the fast XP track, and granting your PCs more XP than the adventure suggests so that they do level up faster. They'll get more powerful, yes, so you'll need to do some extra work to make sure that the encounters stay challenging. You can fight this from the front end by requiring the PCs play characters with 10 point buy stats, or by running the game for only three players....

(For some reason, the last 3 suggestions won't quote?)

Thanks for the ideas (I do really appreciate them), even though I have basically zero chance of seeing them as a player. Looks like I'll have to just run something myself (probably I'll need to write it from scratch) and enjoy it vicariously through the rest of the group.


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James Jacobs wrote:
Philo Pharynx wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
I do believe that some folks are tired of 1st level adventures, but given customer feedback and looking at sales and play data from our products and the PFS program... well, that data tells a very different story.
You done loads of AP's that go from 1 to teens. Does your data say that doing one will sell so poorly that it's not worth trying once?

Kinda tells us this yes. As you've pointed out, we've done lots of them. They work. VERY well. Not super interested in trying to "fix something that's not broken."

If folks WANT us to do an AP that starts at higher level... please let us know! (Or if you want us to never do that and stick to starting at 1st level, let us know that too.)

Some of your customers (and I have probably 80% of the hardback line and a couple of the APs plus the Hero Lab files for everything, though I buy the books locally) ARE asking for higher level APs, and have been for a long time. I personally have been asking for this for at least a couple years. I notice there are numerous threads posted on these forums asking for such a thing, only for the very idea to be stomped on by others, or for Paizo folks to say "nah, we don't plan to do this because X".

So, here's my last grasp at this possibility - YES, I want some APs that don't start at level 1-4. YES, I want some APs that go all the way to 20, or even beyond.

I'm sick to death of starting every new story as a pathetic dirt farmer with single digit hit points. I'm sick to death of seeing class capstones and 9th level spells listed in the rulebooks and then never getting to use them. I'm sick to death of being told "that will never happen, so stop asking for it", or "you don't really want those things you're explicitly asking for".

I don't understand the logic of making rules for something and then never giving your customers the chance to use them (in your official APs, to say nothing about PFS). I don't understand the logic of saying there aren't enough monsters to make high level APs, when there are as many bestiaries as PF has - it seems like it would be a relatively simple thing to have developers make 1 high level critter instead of 2 or 3 more variations on things we already have. I don't understand the logic of asking folks to let you know something we have already been saying for years.

I don't understand what still needs to happen for high level APs to be scheduled/produced.

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