Finding the Path for Saturday, 7 January, 2012

[concerro]

I think you should take on one issue at a time. You should also be clear as to when you are saying the rules allow this, and "this is how I would do it". Your readied action scenario of not using triggers is not legal, as an example. The rules demand a condition(trigger), but the way I read makes it seem like you tried to find a loophole.

Readying an action can be very strategic if planned correctly. That is why they are so limited. Now if a group does not like tactics so much I think your idea works well.

PS:After a second read I realized you were just making a suggestion.
PS2:Nice article

 

[SnowleopardVK]

Neat, my stealth question made it in!

This was rather fun to read, although I agree with Noumenon that it's quite long. If you're planning on keeping all your answers so detailed, then you might benefit from more frequent columns with less questions per column. Ideally the same amount of questions would get answered, but it wouldn't physically look as long, and would probably be less likely to scare away the people who don't want to read so much.

 

[tylermalan]

Another point of advice/criticism...

I know that this was just the initial installment of this series and so future installments might be different, but one thing that I felt was that it was kind-of a useless read for me because I already surf the Pathfinder forum here. So, I had already seen all of the threads from which these questions were taken, and as most of them had lots of debate I already felt like they were answered. The main thing is that the people who will be most interested in a column like this will already be reading the forums, and so I think that future installments will be better (for me, anyway) if the questions are taken from some other source.

 

[Noumenon]

I check the Pathfinder forums a couple times a week but rarely find any interesting questions. So this column provided a bonus service to me in that it found some interesting questions I'd missed.

@Viktyr, you make a good point about the readying costing you your full attack, though I guess that matters most to fighters. (I wonder if it would be fair to let nonspellcasters ready a full attack?)

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Welcome to the job! We will do our best to make your job a living Hell exciting and interesting.

The Auld Grump, astute readers will realize that there is little difference....

 

[concerro]

Neat, my stealth question made it in!

This was rather fun to read, although I agree with Noumenon that it's quite long. If you're planning on keeping all your answers so detailed, then you might benefit from more frequent columns with less questions per column. Ideally the same amount of questions would get answered, but it wouldn't physically look as long, and would probably be less likely to scare away the people who don't want to read so much.

I tried to give you XP for this post, but I got sent to some page that said "This document had no style information.". I don't know who to contact to fix it yet.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I know that this was just the initial installment of this series and so future installments might be different, but one thing that I felt was that it was kind-of a useless read for me because I already surf the Pathfinder forum here.

I'm only going to be taking forum questions when my email inbox is short-- and I've obtained permission from a few other forums to take questions from their forums as well. So the column should be more useful next time around, and for the future in general.

 

[dogstarrb]

You seem to have ignored the fact that flaming and frost can't be on the same weapon at the same time. It's specified in both enhancement descriptions in the core book. He could certainly swap to shocking and either flaming or frost, but that would take away his advantage of 3 energy types to try to circumvent energy resistances. Also, does the magus have a magic weapon already? Otherwise he has to put another enhancement on before he can add either weapon property (which surprisingly many people seem to ignore.) At 6h level he certainly COULD, but it was never specified, and that extra point to add an enhancement bonus helps burn through the pool faster.
The "more encounters to drain his resources" is a great tactic... and will push him to try to use his pool for other things, like spell recall, in the future. When fights are lasting long enough that he has to rebuff, and he's facing several encounters per day and needing to manage his resources better, he might not want to stack as many things onto his weapon at once. And if he runs out of spell slots, no more channeling shocking grasp through the weapon. A twist on this is to make him fight several small encounters spread out throughout the day. Here's 2 or 3 creatures... 30 minutes later after all your spells are off, here's another few... etc.

 

[SmuggleNutz]

How about posting every other week? (Or twice a month...) Kind of a compromise between monthly and weekly.

Excellent article, well written and researched. I even found myself reading about things we don't use (Psionics) just to see what the question and answer were.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

You seem to have ignored the fact that flaming and frost can't be on the same weapon at the same time. It's specified in both enhancement descriptions in the core book.

You are the second person to tell me that-- I'm going to address it in next month's column-- but I can not find a single piece of evidence to suggest that it's true. There is no such rule in the weapon enhancement descriptions in the d20PFSRD, the Hypertext d20 SRD, in my second printing copy of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, or in any of the official Paizo update documents.

I'll issue a correction if someone can show me proof that this rule exists.

Also, does the magus have a magic weapon already? Otherwise he has to put another enhancement on before he can add either weapon property (which surprisingly many people seem to ignore.) At 6h level he certainly COULD, but it was never specified, and that extra point to add an enhancement bonus helps burn through the pool faster.

I believe you're misreading the rule. The Magus only has to spend one point from his arcane pool to add the flaming and frost enhancements to his weapon, because at 5th level the ability grants the equivalent of a +2 bonus. If the weapon weren't already magical-- which, at 5th level, I am assuming it is-- then the Magus would have to use one point of that enhancement bonus to make it a +1 weapon first.

The Magus can't spend more than 1 point from his arcane pool to apply more enhancements to his weapon.

The "more encounters to drain his resources" is a great tactic... and will push him to try to use his pool for other things, like spell recall, in the future.

That's the idea. When you're designing challenging encounters for your PCs, you want them to have to use all of their tricks to prevail, and not rely on the same trick over and over. Variety is the spice of life and the point of game balance.

edit: Damn. I was going to give you XP to thank you for your interest and for the compliments, but it seems to be disabled. So, in lieu of granting you XP, I'll just thank you here. I'm looking forward to hearing from you next month!