Pathfinder 1E [PEACH] glass's PF1 homebrew

[glass]

An offhand remark in the PF2 Gunslinger/Inventor thread inspired me to start posting my PF1 hombrew, starting with a backporting of the apex items from PF2 to PF1. Quoting myself from the other thread:

Speaking of fan conversions, this exchange spurred me to a bit of backporting myself. I rather like the flavour of apex items (PF2 stat boosters), so I decided to start there...obviously they are strictly worse than the normal PF1 stat boosters, so they will be of limited use in campaigns where the latter are available. But there are enough varient campaigns where they might see use to be worthwhile IMO....

Any comments/queries/etc, please let me have them.

EDIT: Revised version in post #6.

 

[Morrus]

PEACH? Have we gone back in time to the early 2000s on WotC's old messageboards?

 

[Alzrius]

How does having an ability score raised to 18 interact with ability penalties such as from ray of enfeeblement, as well as ability damage and ability drain?

 

[kenada]

I’m not sure about the interaction with ability drain, but ability penalties and damage don’t actually change the underlying score. They’re more like nonlethal damage for your ability scores. I’d expect them to work like normal.

 

[glass]

PEACH? Have we gone back in time to the early 2000s on WotC's old messageboards?

Is it that old? I am pretty sure I have seen it much more recently than that! (Not least because I was not that active on the WotC boards.)

How does having an ability score raised to 18 interact with ability penalties such as from ray of enfeeblement, as well as ability damage and ability drain?

I’m not sure about the interaction with ability drain, but ability penalties and damage don’t actually change the underlying score. They’re more like nonlethal damage for your ability scores. I’d expect them to work like normal.

kenada is right that penalties and damage don't actually change the underlying score, but drain does. That means that as written drain could not reduce your effective score below 18 but damage and penalties would affect you normally. Drain being better for you than damage when it is the other way around for everyone is counter intuitive to say the least. I will have to have a think about how (or if) to fix that.

Good catch folks. Thank you!

_
glass.

 

[glass]

I will have to have a think about how (or if) to fix that.

I added and extra paragraph to address the issue, which annoyingly messes with the pagination but them's the breaks (pun not intended, but recognised and left in....).

Revised version attached.

 

[glass]

A quick one: Generally speaking I like the Trait subsystem added (IIRC) in the APG, but I am not a fan of searching through all the Traits to find ones that affect skills I need. So I came up with a Skilled trait that partially replaces them. But since it would be a bit weird to have a category of one Trait I kept spinning of the weaker and stronger skills until I had a reasonable number. UMD and Perception get flat-out weaker bonuses. Weaker skills do not get stronger bonuses (because Skilled is pretty decent already) - rather they get broader applicability.

Knowledgeable is the way it is to help keep all or many of the Knowledge skills the same, which is something I like to do for sufficiently intelligent characters (it just makes life a little easier when you do not know what knowledge is relevant until after you have successfully rolled it).

EDIT: Revised version in post #9.

 

[glass]

A year or so back when DDi shut down, I ported my 4e campaign to PF1. Since one of the characters was a Warlord, I needed something similar in PF1 - I looked at a couple of third-party alternatives, but in the end I created a whole new class. It started off as as faithful an adaptation of the 4e Warlord as I can manage (except the name - I never really liked Warlord as a class name, and there are at least two classes called that for PF1 already). Then I added a few options that were more natively Pathfinder-ish.

The slightly-odd archetype is more recent, and also as a response to real-world concerns. Two of the players in said campaign had a baby together, and after dropping out for a little while they asked if they could come back but with one character between them. One that was thematically a mash-up of their two previous characters. Hence Captain plus natury bits (the other character was a Ranger).

Since there is discussion of the Warlord going on in the Level Up section, it seems to be topical....

 

[glass]

Spotted a mistake in the traits document above; Catalyst was supposed to relate to Use Magic Device, but due to a cut-&-paste error it was a duplicate of Perceptive. Corrected version attached.

_
glass.