ARG errata - regarding Favored Class Oracle Bard change


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Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Minnesota

18K... Wow. Still, that might be something for me to build towards!

1/5

Just a note of that awesome banner: It is not an inspire courage bonus of +5/+5. It is actually two separate bonuses: the inspire courage at +3/+3 and the flagbearer bonus at +2/+2. Your flagbearer bonus wont stack with a lot of other buffs (bless, good hope, heroism) but it opens up those spell slots for other spells in the party.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

Actually, if you *are* using the banner, there is no point taking more than the 6 of the FCB since you gain no benefit for having an effective bard level of more than 17. So that means that at level 12, (which is when you would get your second plus one, you already have 12 + 1 (FCB) +4 (Banner)

Now with the old FCB, and a banner, you would max at level 9.

With the new system and a banner, you will get IC+3 at level 6.
With the old system and a banner, you will get IC+3 at level 5.

The banner makes a lot of the pain of this errata go away.

1/5

Don't think you can purchase the banner that early. It costs 18,000gp so you need 36 fame. So the earliest you can purchase the banner is lvl 7.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

Hmm... in that case, the old FCB gets you +2 one level early, Everyone, (old, new, or no FCB) gets +3 at 7th (or whenever they can afford the banner.) And only the +4 has really changed.

Silver Crusade 5/5 5/5 **

Andrew Roberts wrote:

Probably Banner of the Ancient Kings for +2 with Flagbearer and a +3 Inspire Courage bonus from the boosted bard levels from the banner, which can be done as early as level 7.

It's just being a bard, an item, and a feat. Not really an entire build.

Almost the same thing can be achieved with the Good Hope spell. (Same bonuses but takes a level 3 spell)

Exactly correct. Its a quite common build. Fun and effective.

What I particularly like about it is that it takes so little resources that you can spend resources (especially action economy) on fun things. I personally just LOVE Blistering Invective, the whole concept of insulting enemies so much that they burst into flames appeals to my sense of humour. Sure, I could be doing other more effective things with those actions but I figure I'm already more than doing my "share" with the +5/+5 :-)

Scarab Sages 2/5

Andrew Roberts wrote:
Carlos Robledo wrote:
Bard change affects thundercaller archetype bards who were abusing the boosted feature for massive damage and savers.

I have a thundercaller bard affected by this. This isn't a huge deal and doesn't really break the character.

** spoiler omitted **

Also, just because a few (popular) options were not liked using this FCB; many, many more concepts were nuked because of it for both bards and oracles. (Not really directed at you Carlos. Just a general statement.)

Thunder Call wrote:
Thunder Call (Su): At 3rd level, the thundercaller can use her performance to unleash a deafening peal of thunder. This allows the thundercaller to spend a round of performance to create an effect similar to the spell sound burst (having the same range and area and allowing the same saving throw). At 7th level, the sonic damage that is dealt by this blast of sound increases to 3d8. This damage further increases to 5d8 at 11th level, 7d8 at 15th level, and 9d8 at 19th level. This performance replaces inspire competence.

It is an effect similar to Sound Burst, specifically stating range (Short) and type of Save (Fortitude). It is not casting Sound Burst, which is why is scales via 10+1/2CL+CHA

If you look at the Thundercaller's Call Lightning, it specifically states as per the spell Call Lightning.

Call Lightning via Thundercaller Bard wrote:
Call Lightning (Su): At 8th level, the thundercaller can use her performance to summon bolts of lightning, as per the spell call lightning. The lightning storm lasts for as long as she continues her performance, calling down one bolt of lightning per round. The damage of these lightning bolts can be increased in stormy areas or can be limited as call lightning describes. This performance replaces dirge of doom.

If the creator of the archetype wanted it as Sound Burst, it would have done the exact same thing in choice of wording, "as per the spell Sound Burst" instead of "an effect similar to Sound Burst". Then they would place the incremental damage afterwards.

The Change to the FCB for the archetype is actually pretty massive, since it reduces the max damage per Thunder Call from 7d6 at 11, to 5d6 at 10, with the FCB of 6.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

I wonder if the bigger problem with the old FCB is sound striker's weird words. With the errata to WW it is no longer capped at 10 levels of damage. So at level 8 you would have 12d6+charismax3 damage, and at 11th you would get 16d6+charismax4 damage. All sonic, one of the rarer energy resistances. All ranged touch attacks.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

Lets see, average damage from optimized weird words,

Level 8: 12x3.5+21 = 63 damage.

That is almost enough to one shot 10th level clerics. Should oneshot most 10th level wizards.

4/5

Cao Phen wrote:
Thundercaller Stuff

Off Topic:
There's another massive thread that I am failing to find that argues this point. If you look at Fascinate, it has the DC specifically listed. There is no overall rule to what the DCs of bardic performance are because there is nothing in the general bardic performance ability about it, so you have to rely on what you know, which is sound burst in this case.

Anyway, this is Off Topic and I will argue this point no further here.

Scarab Sages 2/5

Andrew Roberts wrote:
Cao Phen wrote:
Thundercaller Stuff
** spoiler omitted **

Very well, back on topic.

If the FCB was changed from +1/2 to +1/4 instead of the current +1/6, would people have not been as upset on the overall change? I know that there are some people that will be upset no matter how little the change, but if it was a middle ground, would people accept it (then again, we have to accept the current changes =))?

Scarab Sages

I know that I would much happier with a +1/4, rather than a +1/6. Most +1/6 stuff is roughly equivalent to a feat. Such as the Human Rogue getting a new rogue talent, or the Halfling Magus getting a new Arcana. There were almost no +1/6 FCBs before now, most were +1/2. Many are +1/3 or +1/4, with only a few of the originals being +1/6. This just makes it seem like someone in the dev team hates multiclass characters. I have several characters that will never take 6 levels in any class, so whats the point of even having racial FCBs at this point?

The Exchange 3/5

I'd be at least appeased with +1/4, it'd give me some of my concept back again but I seriously doubt they will re-Errata a document if they've already printed the books.

1/5

changing the bonus is probably to dissuade against multi-classing, since paizo loves their solo-classed characters. Having to stay longer in a class to get any perk means less multiclass. to bad they can't say you gain 1/6 of a bonus and when you reach 1 bonus you gain a +3 to your bard level. now it still dissuades multiclassing, but still gives a nice reward for staying in class.

4/5

FLite wrote:

I wonder if the bigger problem with the old FCB is sound striker's weird words. With the errata to WW it is no longer capped at 10 levels of damage. So at level 8 you would have 12d6+charismax3 damage, and at 11th you would get 16d6+charismax4 damage. All sonic, one of the rarer energy resistances. All ranged touch attacks.

Seems unlikely this was any sort of game breaker. 8P

You're forgetting you cannot take a FCB to boost a class ability you do not have, so they can't start boosting weird words until they get it at level 6.

The Base soundstriker gets a word at 6, 8, 12, 16, 20
OLD FCB soundstriker gets a word at 6, 7, 10, 13, 15, 18
NEW FCB soundstriker gets a word at 6, 8, 11, 15, 18

So, under the Old FCB, they got one extra word over a 20 level career. VS just a few levels earlier on some for the new FCB.

In a normal 12 level PFS career, there's almost no difference at all, as all will only ever have 3 words.

Silver Crusade 1/5

Andrew Roberts wrote:


How about my Dark Tapestry oracle that the only reason I was playing him was because I thought it would be cool to get Greater Polymorph at level 11, and now he won't get it in his PFS career at all and all the different minis I collected for him are for naught?

Likewise, I made the same character choice. I too have collected a number of minis that I will not get to use now.

The core of (my oracle) Quenly's being is ripped out.

I had a fun character with an interesting story supported by the game mechanics. I could contribute, but did not dominate or overwhelm. Now the variety (and hence fun) offered by the Many Forms revelation will be greatly diminished, and in combat I will be outclassed and outshone by any wildshaping druid of equal level (who will probably have an animal companion on top).

This was not a necessary nerf. And if it was an erratum why did we get no inkling of the supposed error in the three years since the ARG was first published? There was even an FAQ on the subject of FCBs, and it gave no hint that the design team felt that they had printed an error.

Bad decision Paizo. I need an explanation please, not just for the nerf but also for the manner of the nerfing.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East

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The problem with the new guide line about "You can rebuild your FCB into another bonus" is that for many characters, they were built around relying on that bonus. Rebuilding it into another FCB makes the character pointless.

The Exchange 3/5

thistledown wrote:
The problem with the new guide line about "You can rebuild your FCB into another bonus" is that for many characters, they were built around relying on that bonus. Rebuilding it into another FCB makes the character pointless.

Pretty much this. My whole Bard was built around this and willingly gave up all remaining FCB as penance to make the build work.

3/5

Well, that's annoying in both timing and content. Didn't see this come out during (or was it the day before?) GenCon, so my character was technically illegal. I dislike feeling like I cheated, even unknowingly. Content-wise it's annoying, because it pretty much makes it such that being human would have been hands-down better for my bard than aasimar. The bonus spells (which can be used for masterpieces even) are super-strong options, and the flavor would have been just as good with a full Shoanti than with my celestial-blooded Shoanti. People may say it's no big deal, but really there's a huge difference between +1 level and +3 levels effectiveness (over the course of 6 levels of play) and +2 vs. +6 (over the standard PFS 12). It doesn't make the character unplayable, but it hurts it a lot, and negates much of the upsides of my creation choices while keeping all of the downsides.

3/5

Do I remember correctly that while you cannot boost an ability you do not yet have, that only counts for full boosts? Such that you could start boosting a level 6-gained song at level 1 with your +1/6 fcb, since it doesn't actually do anything until you have the ability? Or am I misremembering that?

Liberty's Edge 2/5

DrakeRoberts wrote:
Do I remember correctly that while you cannot boost an ability you do not yet have, that only counts for full boosts? Such that you could start boosting a level 6-gained song at level 1 with your +1/6 fcb, since it doesn't actually do anything until you have the ability? Or am I misremembering that?

You are misremembering, you cannot apply a bonus (fractional or whole) to an ability until you actually have the ability.

Silver Crusade 5/5 5/5 **

DrakeRoberts wrote:
being human would have been hands-down better for my bard than aasimar.

"Hands down better" seems excessive. As an Aasimar you get a lot that is useful to a bard. The bonus +2 to a stat is most useful but the other abilities are also good. Bards aren't often either feat or skill point starved. So you're losing the human FCB which, while nice, also tends not to be essential.

I don't know your build so of course I could be wrong but I know that all of my human bards (I think I have about 6) would be at least as powerful as Aasimar, even when totally ignoring the Aasimar FCB.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Humans do seem to have gotten a lot of love on the favored class bonuses.


Are the +1 off-list spell known for Shaman FCB still there?
That one seemed prime for nerfing to +1/2 or even less to me.
The +1 is the same as other FCB granting ON-list spell knowns,
even though there is additional mechanical benefit of drawing off-list.

Grand Lodge 2/5

FLite wrote:

Actually, it is coming out now *because* it is before gencon.

They were trying to get this out as early as possible before gencon.

Typically the errata comes out when the new printing of the book comes out. That implies that the books that will be on sale at gen con will be the second printings of ACG and ARG.

You *really* don't want to have a situation where half the table has the 2nd printing, and half the table is working off the first because the errata isn't out yet. The drama will be disastrous.

Actually, they were still selling off their copies of the first printing of the ACG. I didn't even think to check the ARG. Since the errata just came out and the books weren't even discounted to account for that I found that super shady.

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