Author Topic: Look at this thing I found in Pathfinder! The bad feats/spells/etc thread  (Read 128172 times)

Offline Libertad

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Thanks grognards.txt!

Monkey Lunge (Combat)
Paizo Peripheral

This content is from material published by Paizo Publishing, LLC, but is not part of the Pathfinder Core Rules.
You can quickly recover from your lunges, helping you to avoid counterattacks.
Prerequisites: Lunge, Acrobatics 1 rank.

Benefit: As a standard action, you can use the Lunge feat to increase the reach of your melee attacks by 5 feet until the end of your turn, without suffering a penalty to your AC. You cannot use this feat if you carry a medium or heavy load.

Normal: You take a -2 penalty to your AC until your next turn when making a lunge attack.

Waaaahhhh...
« Last Edit: March 24, 2013, 01:47:50 AM by Libertad »

Offline Solo

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2012, 12:41:52 AM »
HAHAHA
"I am the Black Mage! I cast the spells that makes the peoples fall down."

Offline FlaminCows

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2012, 01:00:31 AM »
Right up there with Prone Shooter, which negates the attack penalty for firing a crossbow while prone.

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Offline Keldar

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2012, 01:22:58 AM »
Piazo sure gets what was wrong with 3E.  Yup yup.

Offline Libertad

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2012, 01:31:10 AM »
The sad part is that I get what Paizo was doing, but they were soooooo close!

Adding 5 feet to your reach can be great for melee builds, especially Spiked Chain and reach weapon guys.  The problem is that the Feat doesn't do anything!  If it was a Swift action, it would be a pretty good choice.

When people pointed out broken stuff in the playtest, they did occasionally respond so I know they have it in them.  They're like Icarus, flying so close to the sun they come crashing down.

Offline Vasja

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #5 on: September 28, 2012, 01:51:45 AM »

Offline StreamOfTheSky

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #6 on: September 28, 2012, 01:57:10 AM »
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/elephant-stomp-combat

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I probably shouldn't have bothered bolding anything, the entire paragraph is basically pure fail.

Offline Solo

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2012, 02:02:30 AM »
Why wouldn't you just... attack them?
"I am the Black Mage! I cast the spells that makes the peoples fall down."

Offline Libertad

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2012, 02:49:58 AM »
Noticed that both feats are from the same product: Sargava the Lost Colony.

Is that sourcebook a collection of Pathfinder's worst feats or something?

Offline ImperatorK

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2012, 03:11:15 AM »
Thanks grognards.txt!

Monkey Lunge (Combat)
Paizo Peripheral

This content is from material published by Paizo Publishing, LLC, but is not part of the Pathfinder Core Rules.
You can quickly recover from your lunges, helping you to avoid counterattacks.
Prerequisites: Lunge, Acrobatics 1 rank.

Benefit: As a standard action, you can use the Lunge feat to increase the reach of your melee attacks by 5 feet until the end of your turn, without suffering a penalty to your AC. You cannot use this feat if you carry a medium or heavy load.

Normal: You take a -2 penalty to your AC until your next turn when making a lunge attack.

Waaaahhhh...
I would like to point out that Monkey Lunge only removes the -2 penalty from the Lunge feat that actually gives you the 5 feet of additional reach. And doesn't "until the end of your turn" mean that you still get the benefit on AoOs?
« Last Edit: September 28, 2012, 03:15:20 AM by ImperatorK »
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Offline Empirate

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #10 on: September 28, 2012, 05:12:12 AM »
It's a bit hard to rely solely on AoOs, especially in PF (no Karmic Strike or Robilar's Gambit, no Stand Still, Trip sucks etc.). Giving up your standard action in order to... stand there a little more ready doesn't strike me as a viable way to stab faces.

Offline ImperatorK

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2012, 06:18:42 AM »
I think it's a typo and they meant for it to remove the penalty but limit you to just a standard attack.
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Offline RobbyPants

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #12 on: September 28, 2012, 07:52:59 AM »
Right up there with Prone Shooter, which negates the attack penalty for firing a crossbow while prone.

(click to show/hide)
No, it's worse than that. Prone Shooter lets you do something you can already do without the feat, so you just waste a feat.

This feat makes it so you literally do nothing with your round (other than move)... and you wasted a feat. You're literally better off simply using the prerequisite Lunge than to use Monkey Lunge. Monkey Lunge makes it so you can't attack that round.
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Offline StreamOfTheSky

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #13 on: September 28, 2012, 12:52:10 PM »
It's a bit hard to rely solely on AoOs, especially in PF (no Karmic Strike or Robilar's Gambit, no Stand Still, Trip sucks etc.). Giving up your standard action in order to... stand there a little more ready doesn't strike me as a viable way to stab faces.

Except both Lunge and Monkey Lunge stipulate until the end of your turn.  So you don't HAVE that reach to make AoOs with, other than the rare few that may come up during your turn.  Which are usually caused by you doing things like tripping (provokes AoO w/ Imp. Trip), which will be rather hard when you just lost your standard action.

Offline StreamOfTheSky

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #14 on: September 28, 2012, 12:54:53 PM »
Why wouldn't you just... attack them?

Yes, that's why it's so much fail, basically.  You spend all those feats to be an uber juggernaut bitch, use a standard or charge (ie, basically all your offensive action for the round) to over run, win it by 5+, which is HARD to do in PF.... and throw away the normal benefit (moving through space and making them prone) in order to waste your immediate action to make an attack w/ a limited weapon selection.  Instead of attacking / vital striking / charging (pouncing) / full attacking / etc... to begin with.
And keeping your immediate!

God, this is like "explaining the joke".

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #15 on: September 28, 2012, 01:19:47 PM »
Oh my god. My head almost imploded. I need to go scrub my brain now.
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Offline zook1shoe

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #16 on: September 28, 2012, 01:46:33 PM »
i don't even play pathfinder and my brain hurts from those  :twitch
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Offline Libertad

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #17 on: September 28, 2012, 04:14:21 PM »
Hey guys, look what else I found with grognards.txt's help:

Helpless Prisoner

You can talk your way out of most restraints.

Prerequisites: Bluff 5 ranks, Escape Artist 1 rank, gnome.

Benefit: When you are restrained or imprisoned, you can make a Bluff check against any one creature within 30 feet in which you emphasize both your own harmlessness and the pain or inconvenience of your current condition. If the creature knows you are dangerous, it adds a +4 bonus to its Sense Motive check. If you win the check, the target does something intended to make you a little more comfortable—or at least shut you up—that gives you a +5 bonus on your next Escape Artist check.

Special: At the GM’s discretion, an especially evil or cruel creature may gain a +2 bonus to its Sense Motive check to resist this ability. If it succeeds, it does something to make your bindings even more secure and less comfortable, giving you a –5 penalty on all Escape Artist checks made in those particular bonds.

This time it's from the Gnomes of Golarian sourcebook!

And not a feat, but a trait which actually makes your character worse at what he does:

Researching the Blot

You may or may not be seeking membership into Riddleport’s most prestigious magical guild, the Order of Cyphers, but you certainly have heard their call for aid in determining the nature of the strange shadow in the sky above Riddleport. You arrived in town several days ago and had some issues with security and safety at several inns before you finally settled on the Gold Goblin; you’ve been staying there as a guest for several days now, and the owner, Saul Vancaskerkin, seems like a nice guy. He’s even given you a pass to attend the gambling tournament he’s about to throw—you’re not sure how into gambling you’ll be, but perhaps there’ll be some visitors from out of town you can talk to about the strange shadow in the sky. At the very least, you’re hoping someone at the tourney will be into magic—there’s not really enough folk in this town who seem all that interested in magic, you’ve found. Your interest in magic dates back quite far, and as a result, you’ve developed a knack for identifying common magical items at a glance.

Benefit: You can use Spellcraft to identify magic items in the same way you can use Spellcraft to identify a potion. The DC to identify a magic item is equal to 20 + the item’s caster level.

Guess what?  In Pathfinder, the DC to identify a magic item is 15 + the item's caster level.  Not only does it give you an ability which you can already do with Spellcraft, it increases the DC.

Offline StreamOfTheSky

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #18 on: September 28, 2012, 04:44:07 PM »
Yeah, Helpless Prisoner and Death or Glory are also tremendous low points.  People claim 3E is more trap laiden, but it is actuall PF that literally punishes you for making the wrong feat choice.  In 3E, the punishment was only getting 3 measly hp."  In PF, you're actually harmed.

Researching the Blot...
If that was written for a 3E D&D supplement, back when spellcraft didn't let you ID items on its own, I could see that being useful.  But since it uses the PF trait system...I doubt that's the case... Wow... 

Offline Libertad

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Re: Look at this Pathfinder feat I found!
« Reply #19 on: September 28, 2012, 04:51:52 PM »
Yeah, Helpless Prisoner and Death or Glory are also tremendous low points.  People claim 3E is more trap laiden, but it is actuall PF that literally punishes you for making the wrong feat choice.  In 3E, the punishment was only getting 3 measly hp."  In PF, you're actually harmed.

In hindsight, Monte Cook's Ivory Tower Game Design article doesn't seem so bad.