>>1450 Haven't played Pathfinder in a long time, but I do agree that this does seem incredibly powerful. However just like 3.5 Pathfinder is riddled with things like this that are easily overpowered and broken. Good post!

More weird pathfinder stuff? Sure, why not. A great form of often overlooked defense is incorporeality. https://aonprd.com/UMR.aspx?ItemName=Incorporeal >take half damage from any corporeal source >if a corporeal spell targeting you doesn't do damage, you have a 50% chance to ignore it completely >you are fully immune to nonmagical damage (enemies need at least a +1 enhancement bonus weapon or have their natural attacks count as magic) >if you must roll to hit, you can ignore your enemies ac bonuses from natural armor, armor, and shields, >you get your charisma bonus to ac as a deflection bonus (this stacks with most other cha to ac things) >use dex instead of str for melee attacks >no falling damage >no swim checks >can't set off most traps due to not weighing anything Oddly enough, classic spells like Gaseous Form DONT grant you full incorporeality. You need something like Dust form (1round/cl) or Shadow Body (1 minute/cl). The best spell however seems to be Shadow Projection: https://www.aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Shadow%20Projection >duration: 1 hour/level (D) >gain full incorporeality >also gain the str damage touch attack of a shadow The only downsides are that your shadow form gets treated as an undead (vulnerable to turn undead and channeled energy) and that you need to keep your body someplace safe. Honestly a great tradeoff for a 4th level spell. Now that's all well and good, but maybe for some reason your fighter wants to be spooky too. Assuming he's too feat starved for something like the Share Spells teamwork feat, he can still join in for the low cost of deleting his strength score. Behold, one of the dumbest things to come from Paizo since Sacred Geometry: Ghost Syrup https://www.aonprd.com/Necrotoxins.aspx For the low price of 6k gold (assuming you have a way to reduce your fort save) you can gain PERMANENT incorporeality. You lose your strength score, so don't try this if you aren't some kind of dex to damage build. The only real drawback of being incorporeal permanently this way is...well... none of your equipment or items will be incorporeal. You might be able to walk through doors, but you aren't picking up your handy haversack anytime soon. Thankfully, Paizo was kind enough to publish the Amulet of Grasping Souls https://aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Amulet%20of%20Grasping%20Souls >Lets incorporeal creatures pick up and use corporeal items Problem solved for 21k. Grab craft wondrous to get the full combo for 13.5k gold. For a full caster with the eschew materials feat, you should have enough money to craft your own Ghost Syrup at level 3-4, right around when you'd unlock the craft wondrous feat. You'd be amazed at how many enemies won't have an answer for complete nonmagical damage immunity. Ignore every trap and locked door. Solo an entire dungeon with acid splash. Save the day 1d3 acid damage at a time.

>yet another shameless self bump Yep. Found something interesting and wanted to shout it into the void somewhere. So, Wyrwood are really cool. Construct type gives you a lot of immunities. And incorporeal is pretty cool too. Great defensive option. Too bad the only way to combine them is a 4th level arcane spell(shadow projection), and its debatable if you can even cast spells in that form (no listed language for shadows means they likely can't talk, and James Jacobs [not a rules guy but still] claims the spell was never meant to be used with spellcasting). It's really a shame you can't use Ghost Syrup as a wyrwood since you have poison immunities. There's investigators anathema talent, but that completely overwrites the poison. There's an alchemist discovery to use poisons on evil outsiders and undead, but wyrwood are neither of those. Maybe with mythic spells and pernicious poison? But what kind of degenerate actually uses mythic rules? Well, maybe you should just go to hell: https://aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?Category=Damnation So these feats require you to form a pact with a patron that has more hit dice than you, so you need to get somebody to cast planar ally or a similar spell asap to qualify for it early. Most of the feats have okish benefits, but we're mainly here for Feindskin. https://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Fiendskin >Four Damnation Feats: Your creature type changes to outsider (native)... So this forces you out of being a construct, so you lose all your construct immunities- including poison. It takes all 4 damnation feats to do this, so you need to be 7th level or find some way to get extra feats earlier. So you damn yourself to hell, become an outsider, and chug your Ghost Syrup for incorporeality. Badass! Now how do you go back to being a construct? Naturally, you just retrain the feats into something else. Retraining has some special rules for damnation feats- mainly you can't be any flavor of evil and you also need a casting of atonement. But once you drop that first feat you lose the 4 feat bonus and your type changes back to construct. So assuming you get 7th level, can retrain, and have access to atonement you can become an incorporeal construct. Enjoy being immune to nonmagic damage, most spell effects, and don't forget to upgrade yourself with the modifying construct rules.

I am not a big fan of pathfinder. Everything about the game feels like its made by the biggest min/maxxers on the planet and they expect you to be a massive powergamer as well.

>>3387 I guess I'll just keep bumping my own thread until mods slap my shit. So, in relation to wyrwood and Ghost syrup. The challenge is changing type via damnation feats. The biggest hurdle with such a build is requiring retraining. Retraining damnation feats requires atonement, and feat retraining CANNOT be done without a trainer, so its completely under the purview of the DM. Since you only really need to change your type for a few rounds to fail a couple of fort saves, it would be nice if we only had the 4th damnation feat for type changing temporarily. If only there were some way to have a temporary feat... Oh wait, what about paragon surge? https://www.aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Paragon%20Surge This spell was so abused that it wound up getting its own errata (and then got circumvented by another feat Emergency Attunement, but thats not important right now). The original cheese was to use this to get a temporary feat for extra arcana, and essentially have any spell you want as a spontaneous caster. However, we don't care about getting different effects- hell, we only need to cast it once. The only problem is it requires the caster be half-elf. Normally, there's Racial Heritage, but that only works for humans, not wyrwood. Enter the Loremaster: https://www.aonprd.com/PrestigeClassesDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Loremaster Now, as a prestige class, its not terrible. Full caster progression, some interesting if underwhelming bonuses, and maybe a bonus feat if you need it. What makes it special, is access to the 'secret class feature'. Having secrets lets you qualify for a really fun feat: https://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Secret%20of%20Magical%20Discipline >Benefit: Once per day, you can cast any spell as if it were one of your prepared spells or spells known. This action expends either a spell slot or a prepared spell of the same spell level. Casting a spell this way always has a minimum casting time of 1 full round. You read that right. ANY spell. Any at all. Arcane, divine, psychic- really any at all. Now here's where things get funny: Domain spells. Normally, domain spells are just regular spells, maybe they give a cleric some unique options they wouldn't normally have but for the most part they're just regular spells. Of course there are exceptions. Liberation has a 'self realization' subdomain: https://www.aonprd.com/DomainDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Liberation Of note, it has an ALTERED paragon surge: >Replacement Domain Spells: 4th—paragon surge (Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide 48; always matches your actual race) >Take a level of loremaster >Take Secret of Magical Discipline for any spell 1/day >Can now cast Paragon Surge via Self Realization domain >can now gain the 4th damnation feat temporarily So now you can get Ghost Syrup access as a wyrwood without needing to touch the retraining rules. The only drawback is you give up your level 20 capstone ability (honestly who plays at a table at level 20?) and you need to take skill focus and 3 craft feats. I don't know what to do with this knowledge. I imagine trying this at an actual table would have the dm throwing every book he owns at you, but I wanted to post it someplace that wasn't full of faggotshit like the rest of the internet is these days.

>>3534 >I guess I'll just keep bumping my own thread until mods slap my shit. There aren't any rules against self bumping. If there was I would have to ban myself.

that was a fun ride Honestly, PF is only good as a 3.5 supplement, there are many fun niche options, but you have to sieve trough a lot of trash, nerfs, and poorly designed things to find them

>>1450 Honestly most Wyrwood shit is TO (theoretical optimization). A lot of GMs won't let you play as Wyrwoods and even those who do typically won't let you obtain construct modifications. >>3404 Hilariously, the Pathfinder developers hate min-maxers, but they are bad at balance and occasionally pump out content to give classes they like "nice things" so they don't understand when they've created something fucking broken. Pathfinder is actually more conducive to minmaxing because they do shit like create a buffed 3.5 Fighter instead of Tome of Battle martials (which iirc they considered munchkin bullshit) because if you want to just pump numbers high, the Fighter's shitton of feats and +1 bonuses are much better for breaking balance. My favorite example is how they didn't like 3.5's prestige class chicanery so they tried to make prestige classes weak and undesirable options in PF, except a lot of prestige classes in Pathfinder are fucking broken OP lmao, like the Loremaster's Secret of Magical Discipline. >>3534 Honestly anon, a lot of the shit you're posting has already been gone over on https://minmaxforum.com/

>>3573 >Hilariously, the Pathfinder developers hate min-maxers You know I find that very hard to believe. >to give classes they like "nice things" so they don't understand when they've created something fucking broken. That I can absolutely believe though.

>>3588 >You know I find that very hard to believe. There's some variation among staff but largely it's true. They were pissed at destructive same game testing when high-op players started analyzing the problems with Pathfinder Core and straight up banned some of those people and told them they weren't interested in that kind of feedback, along with a slew of over-the-top nerfs to destroy builds. That's why PF nerfed things like Quick Draw and Acrobatics of all things, because they (Jason Bulmahn, iirc) were pissed at a flask rogue build in a same game test or rogues using Tumbling for AoO-free movement. It was a pretty infamous incident. It's the same kind of mindset you occasionally see in computer security, when you inform a boss of a security vulnerability they have so that they fix it and instead of fixing it the higher-ups get mad at you and try to go after you like you're the one ruining their security. When people informed Paizo of balance issues by coming up with unbalanced builds/stunts/etc illustrating the problem, Paizo staff on a number of occasions used to get mad at them like they were the cause of Pathfinder's balance issues and occasionally even banned posters over this. There's also a lot of pettiness underscoring PF's design. A lot of balancing is not done with the perspective of whether or not it's a serious issue but whether or not it upsets them to see something like that or whether they don't like certain things. That's why you see a lot of unbalanced shit coming out of them because little +1 bonuses tend to proliferate because they are derivative and playing it "safe" like that and suddenly people can stack them into something absurd, or they create a "neat" or "fun" power and don't contemplate what it means when someone seriously explores what it's capable of, like a Pathfinder Chronicler spamming Inspire Action bardic performances with his standard, move, and swift actions to just give party spellcasters 3 extra standard actions per round. Paizo continually underestimates how dangerous spellcasting is while fretting about martials doing too much damage (even though it prints so much shit you can daisy-chain into retarded damage numbers), for instance. Pathfinder Savant is another prestige class that's just fucking horrifying when a Wizard or Sorcerer decides to to add Summoner spells to his spell list and get a shitton of spells 1 or 2 spell levels earlier than he should have them, and that's not even some kind of cheesy rules interpretation. It just straight up allows for that. It's far from the only way to cast spells from other classes' spell lists either. The Alchemist casually breaks action economy and allows for obscene amounts of pre-fight buffing now that you don't have to worry about verbal components alerting enemies. Psychic spellcasting was such a fucking disaster that Paizo invented an entire rule out of thin air through total bullshit in a Pathfinder Core FAQ so that they could pretend they weren't errataing shit and claimed you couldn't just spam spells undetected. And Paizo still does not understand the design issues with the Arcanist class, even though it's a class that gets stupid bonuses to spellcasting and is excessively positioned to cast the right spell whenever he wants. A lot of shit is also released clearly untested and poorly proofread, which is why occasionally Paizo releases absolutely retarded content that misunderstands Pathfinder's rules, like the infamous Prone Shooter feat which removed the penalty for shooting a ranged weapon while prone (there is no such penalty). Anyway, the short of it is that PF is an unbalanced mess alright, because it's made by people who don't understand balance. When they try to "balance" shit they either fuck it up and make something OP or so over-neuter it that they clearly didn't realize an option is still supposed to be at least a little good so that people have an actual reason to use it instead of being a trap option.

>>3588 they nerfed the spiked chain because of a memebuild that wasn't even legal

>>3608 Well that is just funny. >>3590 I already knew about Paizo trash but I never did a deep dive on their bullshit. >Paizo continually underestimates how dangerous spellcasting is while fretting about martials doing too much damage I will never understand this mindset, People will sperg out if Martials are even slightly good while letting mages do whatever the fuck they feel like.

>>3608 Yeah, PF spiked chains are terrible. Now people just provoke AoOs across 2 reach increments by wielding a 2H reach weapon and armor spikes or something (like a single natural attack, which as a primary natural attack does damage like a 2H weapon) if they even care to. And reach builds are still popular and effective. The nerf was senseless, but it bothered them because this was a known "OP" build. You see much dumber shit as a martial build when you have a Cavalier doing a 1 level Sohei Monk dip to take Mounted Skirmisher at level 1. >>3619 They view spellcasters as a theoretical danger or a class that deserves to be a game-breaker because it fits the "vision" of a wizard to be strong in the magical arts regardless of underlying game balance issues, whereas martials are an "active" game danger to them because big damage is scary. Funnily enough Pathfinder, while it spent most of its run going on an enormous hate-boner for martials getting full attacks and movements in the same round before level 10 or shit (a level at which point you don't even want to be playing a martial anymore and are probably looking at multiclass spellcasting if you weren't playing a partial spellcaster to begin with) had no issue with making archery stronger, so that's how martials get to do full attacks each round now: with a bow (or TWF throwing build) using Deadly Aim. It's really dumb.

>>1450 I dont know that I would do it exactly your way OP but I used the technology guides and mage gun classes along with DDS material to craft a megaman zero expy who has a electronic ghost crystal familiar with the ability to not only do that stuff, but grant her an extra turn. The idea of being able to sperg about all of my pf1e builds sounds amazingly nostalgic, but I kind of gave up on ever getting to play. no DM would put up with what I am used to, or likely run a game with me.

>>3573 based prestige class appreciator. I am particularly fond of anything that boots AC or channel energy, which a dm at the time ruled would stack with all sources independently, since the FAQ on channel energy worked likewise.

>>3849 by that i mean animal companion, not armor class

>>3404 why do you hate fun exactly?

>>3848 We really need something other than kingmaker/wotr for pathfinder without a group. I've seen a few db/excel files floating around, but I can't imagine the nightmare of actually cobbling it all together properly, even as a text only calculator type tool.

>>3858 Playing on an Excel document is an interesting idea but in practice I don't know if it's a good idea. Excel scripting has dogshit performance. maptool beats it with a tire iron, but honestly I don't feel particularly married to aps aesthetic and the like to play them straight. For example there are several boat campaigns I want to redesign on the fly to utilize living airship builds I made.