It's certainly still possible to have fun with random stats, especially if your group tends to roll similarly, but point buy just takes one possible problem out of character creation.
I built the character, to the best of my ability given what I was working with, to be good at that thing
the other character who had mostly ignored that thing did better than me at that thing every time
because his stats were so much massively better
I didn't want to play a gimped character, I wanted to play a character who was good at a particular thing, and the goblin dice told me I couldn't do that
and "thing" here could literally be anything at all
Does the system allow you to actually create spells from scratch with enough Gnosis and ranks in the specific school you are working with or is it only intended to allow you to combine and modify existing spells?
It's funny. My group likes Mage, but I expected them to like it best of the WoD themes. It is the most High Fantasy, which they tend to like. But when it comes to WoD, they seem to prefer Hunter. They like the grittier feel of it.
That makes sense. There's a bit of dissonance with the power and flexibility that MAge gives you that doesn't fit very well in the whole 'modern gothic' theme.
I don't want to ask a single sentence question but how complicated can you get when the basic question is "If I were to fire an arrow at an empty 5x5 square what would the AC of the square be?"
"What is the AC of an Empty Square?" "I'm working on optimization problem X, and I need to know the AC of an empty square. I've done research XYZ and I don't have an answer yet because Q"
@DuckTapeal I don't usually run more than that for two reasons. One, I don't have the space. Two, I feel that if I tend to run more than that, not everyone gets much play time. Especially not everyone in the group is experienced role-players, so it can go pretty slowly sometimes.
@Phorden Fair enough. We always played at a game store with plenty of space, and we spent enough of the session just hanging out that it never ended up being a problem.
@Aaron re: the arrow. Delivery should not be the roll you're worried about. It should be a reflex save to GTFO for whatever critter is in the vicinity.
you don't need to hit anywhere close to your target with that.
Okay, I wasn't sure, and I always thought it would be better to run the DR alternative rules for armor, which I wasn't sure if it would nerf them or make them balanced.
The grit stuff is pretty interesting, and the 'touch attack within 1 ranged increment' makes them very dangerous at close range, but basically a gunslinger is a ranged rogue with more options and less damage.
Do you have a link to the DR rules for armour? I'm not familiar with those.
That'll hurt gunslingers kind of a lot. Adding shield and armour enhancement bonuses to touch AC means that one of the gunsligner's best ways of assuring a hit goes away, and they're basically just rogues with grit instead of sneak attack and an expensive weapon.
@Phorden Gunslingers can be quite powerful if you can manage to get a high dex (I currently have a dex mod of 10) and you have the gold to buy good ammo. I use enchanted ammo of various elements for the extra 1d6. Also if you can manage to get extra arms and take multi weapon fighting you get that many more hits and due to hitting at touch you can afford the negatives.
The short version is that warlocks are pretty good in the early to mid-game, but their best invocations are the equivalent of 6th level spells, so primary casters get way better than them at higher levels.
Also, you can duplicate a lot of their better abilities with magic items.
@Aaron I might be able to help you with that, depending on the question. I'm a video game developer, and I read a lot about that when it first happened.
@Aaron If it just contains an item called "candy", you're in the clear. The trademark means that if your game can be mistaken for one of King's games, they can go after you.
Just having an item called "Candy" won't cause any problems.
The point of a trademark is to prevent people from making similar products and profiting off of your name. If the game doesn't have "Candy" in it's name, then you're probably fine.
@Phorden Oh if you are interested I have a gunslinger build on my blog. I am still learning blogging and optimization but here you go. acfreak.wordpress.com
Somewhere in one of these tier system threads it suggests that most of your group is within a tier of eachother, with the better players playing lower tiers and teh worse players playing higher tiers.
I've wanted to play a game where every single PC was a Cleric. Or a Wizard. Or a Druid. But all the same class. I've wondered whether the Tier-I power of such a party would make up for the lack of melee meatshields.
(Of course, Druids and Clerics can be melee meatshields...)
If we're just playing "nerf the wizard with dm fiat", then yeah, you can screw them over to the point where they're useless, but that means your players aren't having any fun.
but yeah, dead magic zones is the reason I can't set my mind on playing a wizard or a cleric gish. There's always this risk to get into a place where I'm less than useless.
How could I ask this as a good Question? I've got a hypothetical scenario: door-gate to and from Sigil into a plane that is entirely filled with the effects of an Anti-Magic Sphere. There is a big bad to kill and a MacGuffin to retrieve from several miles away from the door. What options does a party of level 11 wizards have for accomplishing this?
Even barbarians are hindered in Anti-Magic Spheres because all of their magic items are suppressed.
@Aaron I've got your Pathfinder build challenge for you: build me a level 11 wizard optimized for attacking opponents wearing Amulets of Permanent Anti-Magic Sphere.
> I want my water-balloon-throwing fighter to be able to deal the same damage as a longbow-shooting fighter. Why does Pathfinder have trap options for some ranged characters?
@Zachiel By "Pure Bard", what do you mean? No PRcs? Core only? No alternate songs? If it's core only, it'll be difficult, but you can probably do it with enough splatbooks.
