Author Topic: Look at this thing I found in Pathfinder! The bad feats/spells/etc thread  (Read 142550 times)

Offline Nanashi

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Not so much bad, but pretty hard to miss when you read it and thus blatant enough to be mentioned here
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If the item does not fit into any of these categories, the broken condition has no effect on its use. Items with the broken condition, regardless of type, are worth 75% of their normal value. If the item is magical, it can only be repaired with a mending or make whole spell cast by a character with a caster level equal to or higher than the item’s. Items lose the broken condition if the spell restores the object to half its original hit points or higher. Non-magical items can be repaired in a similar fashion, or through the Craft skill used to create it. Generally speaking, this requires a DC 20 Craft check and 1 hour of work per point of damage to be repaired. Most craftsmen charge one-tenth the item’s total cost to repair such damage (more if the item is badly damaged or ruined).

A chain shirt costs 100 GP, which is doable with starting wealth but fairly restrictive. Buy a broken chain shirt (10 out of 20 HP) for 75GP, pay an armorer 10 GP to spend 10 hours repairing it. Now you've got a chain shirt for 85 GP, which gives plenty of room for a heavy armor class to pick up their normal stuff and the armor.

Offline Power

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Wrong thread. That belongs more in the "Fun Pathfinds" thread since you've found a discount. You can also use the mending cantrip to fix those objects yourself. Another trick for cheaper items on chargen is to use backstory crafting for a much bigger discount, but you'll want to make sure your character can consistently pass the DCs for those checks while taking 10.

Offline Nanashi

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Maybe, but "discount on anything" within a paragraph screams bad writing enough to qualify for this. Mending has a low enough weight limit it doesn't work for anything of particular value.

Crafting in backstory requires you blow some kind of resource for all the but most basic stuff (only armor, simple weapons and bows have craft DCs between 10 and 15), since even a Wizard can't get a +5 bonus from intelligence alone. Only Alchemists (who need Craft: Alchemy anyways and get Crafter's Fortune) and maybe Gunslinger (who need Craft:Gunsmithing but are balanced around crafting their own stuff to the degree PFS has to break their no crafting rule for them) can really benefit from it without spending extra character resources.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 12:11:49 PM by Nanashi »

Offline zook1shoe

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Adopted + Scrounger = broken items cost 50% instead of 75%

downside? it takes a TON of knick-knacks to make a ton of profit

Quote
Scrounger: Others may call it junk, but you call it a
bargain. You can buy objects with the broken condition
at half price (instead of the normal three-quarters price).
The value of the unbroken version of these objects cannot
exceed four times your character level. The price you
pay for this object can never exceed more than twice your
character level in gp (for example, at 5th level you can spend
up to 10 gp on a broken object, meaning you can buy any
object that, if not broken, has a value of 20 gp or less).



Destined for Greatness would be a better way to make a profit. get your free kit, walk around and sell everything. after you walk outside for some fresh air, your kit is mystically restored and you can go ahead and sell things again

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Destined for Greatness:
Ever since you were a child growing up in one of Absalom’s vast
city quarters, you’ve been obsessed with the Starstone Cathedral
and the prospect of acquiring true divinity by passing the Test
of the Starstone. Though it remains to be seen whether you
will ever achieve your long-standing dream, your
fascination with the would-be deities who
enter the Starstone Cathedral and never come
back has granted you no small measure of
savvy when it comes to preparing to explore
dungeons. You start with a kit (such as
those found on page 7 or in Pathfinder RPG
Ultimate Equipment) worth no more than 300
gp, and the expendable contents of the kit
are automatically restored to their original
capacity at no cost to you whenever you enter a
settlement with a population of at least 2,500.
Suggestion: Consider playing a character
who worships, reveres, or perhaps even envies
one of the Ascended—Cayden Cailean, Iomedae, or Norgorber.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2021, 04:01:07 AM by zook1shoe »
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Offline allison-kaas

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Here is an incredible abomination of a feat:

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ANIMAL FEROCITY (COMBAT)
Source Ultimate Wilderness pg. 106
When cornered and wounded, you fight like a feral beast.

Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +3, ferocity racial ability.

Benefit: When your hit points are reduced below 0, you can make attacks, but you take a –5 penalty on each attack roll.

All downside, zero upside. Yep, Paizo has done it. They printed a feat where not having it is strictly better than having it. Definitely the result of a zealous editor nerfing a feat in multiple directions until it becomes worse than useless.

Attacking with a penalty is worse than not being able to attack at all?

Offline Kethrian

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Here is an incredible abomination of a feat:

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ANIMAL FEROCITY (COMBAT)
Source Ultimate Wilderness pg. 106
When cornered and wounded, you fight like a feral beast.

Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +3, ferocity racial ability.

Benefit: When your hit points are reduced below 0, you can make attacks, but you take a –5 penalty on each attack roll.

All downside, zero upside. Yep, Paizo has done it. They printed a feat where not having it is strictly better than having it. Definitely the result of a zealous editor nerfing a feat in multiple directions until it becomes worse than useless.

Attacking with a penalty is worse than not being able to attack at all?

 Ferocity

A Creature with ferocity remains conscious and can continue fighting even if its hit point total is below 0. The Creature is still staggered and loses 1 hit point each round. A Creature with ferocity still dies when its hit point total reaches a negative amount equal to its Constitution score.


So it lets you do something you can already do, but at a penalty that you otherwise don't have.
What do I win?
An awesome-five for mentioning Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.

Offline kitep

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Ferocity

A Creature with ferocity remains conscious and can continue fighting even if its hit point total is below 0. The Creature is still staggered and loses 1 hit point each round. A Creature with ferocity still dies when its hit point total reaches a negative amount equal to its Constitution score.

Staggered means you can make one move or standard action, eg 1 and only 1 attack.
Animal Ferocity lets you make a full attack action.



Offline allison-kaas

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Ferocity

A Creature with ferocity remains conscious and can continue fighting even if its hit point total is below 0. The Creature is still staggered and loses 1 hit point each round. A Creature with ferocity still dies when its hit point total reaches a negative amount equal to its Constitution score.

Staggered means you can make one move or standard action, eg 1 and only 1 attack.
Animal Ferocity lets you make a full attack action.

where does it say full attack?

Offline zook1shoe

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Animal Frenzy doesn't let you make a full attack
« Last Edit: July 27, 2021, 12:00:45 AM by zook1shoe »
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Offline Nanashi

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And if you had pounce, you could full attack while staggered anyways since Pounce still works on that funky charge you can do when restricted to one action

Offline kitep

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where does it say full attack?

On the d20pfsrd website.    https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/animal-ferocity-combat/

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Animal Ferocity (Combat)
When cornered and wounded, you fight like a feral beast.

Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +3, ferocity racial ability.

Benefit: When your hit points are reduced below 0, you can still take the full attack action [Source], but you take a –5 penalty on each attack roll.

Offline Nanashi

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The citation is to an FAQ stated planned errata, but to my knowledge, Paizo's policy was only to do errata if a book got a second printing, and UW never got one so it was never officially errated. Further proof that errata policy is dumb.

Offline zook1shoe

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surprise surprise.. another FAQ not going into a book
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Offline Power

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And if you had pounce, you could full attack while staggered anyways since Pounce still works on that funky charge you can do when restricted to one action
Yep. You can also use a Ring of Ferocious Action to ignore the staggered condition for 5 rounds per day, or use the Accelerate Word of Power through the Experimental Spellcaster feat to give yourself a bonus move action. It's a pretty good wordspell as it allows melee classes to have an extra move action, letting them both move and full attack in the same round. And then there is using feats like Deathless Initiate, To the Last, Ferocious Action, and Unyielding Ferocity to full attack while staggered from being below 0 health and none of them give a -5 penalty to attacks (Deathless Initiate even gives +2 to attack and damage when below 0).

Offline nijineko

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Not so much bad, but pretty hard to miss when you read it and thus blatant enough to be mentioned here
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If the item does not fit into any of these categories, the broken condition has no effect on its use. Items with the broken condition, regardless of type, are worth 75% of their normal value. If the item is magical, it can only be repaired with a mending or make whole spell cast by a character with a caster level equal to or higher than the item’s. Items lose the broken condition if the spell restores the object to half its original hit points or higher. Non-magical items can be repaired in a similar fashion, or through the Craft skill used to create it. Generally speaking, this requires a DC 20 Craft check and 1 hour of work per point of damage to be repaired. Most craftsmen charge one-tenth the item’s total cost to repair such damage (more if the item is badly damaged or ruined).

A chain shirt costs 100 GP, which is doable with starting wealth but fairly restrictive. Buy a broken chain shirt (10 out of 20 HP) for 75GP, pay an armorer 10 GP to spend 10 hours repairing it. Now you've got a chain shirt for 85 GP, which gives plenty of room for a heavy armor class to pick up their normal stuff and the armor.

Wait... you mean you can sell a broken thing for MORE than you can used?

Offline Kethrian

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Re: Look at this thing I found in Pathfinder! The bad feats/spells/etc thread
« Reply #275 on: August 01, 2021, 12:39:50 AM »
Unless there's something letting you resell it after for full price instead of half, then no.
What do I win?
An awesome-five for mentioning Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.

Offline zook1shoe

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Re: Look at this thing I found in Pathfinder! The bad feats/spells/etc thread
« Reply #276 on: August 01, 2021, 05:06:36 PM »
gems n jewelry sell for 100%

buy broke rings, get em repaired and sell for profit
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Offline Power

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Re: Look at this thing I found in Pathfinder! The bad feats/spells/etc thread
« Reply #277 on: August 07, 2021, 01:33:11 PM »
Here's another incredibly terrible spell:
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PHANTASMAL REMINDER
Source Magic Tactics Toolbox pg. 26
School illusion (phantasm) [mind-affecting]; Level antipaladin 3, arcanist 3, bard 4, mesmerist 3, psychic 3, shaman 4, skald 4, sorcerer 3, witch 3, wizard 3
CASTING
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
EFFECT
Range medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target one living creature
Duration 1 round (see text)
Saving Throw Will disbelief, then Fortitude partial; see text; Spell Resistance yes
DESCRIPTION
You create a memory loop of a successful attack made against the target, forcing its conscious mind to recall the details of the attack in such excruciating detail that its physical body is racked by the recollection. This spell can affect only a creature that has taken damage since the end of your last turn. The target first can attempt a Will save to recognize the attack as unreal. If it fails that saving throw, the target must succeed at a Fortitude save or take an amount of damage equal to 1d6 × your caster level (maximum 10d6). Because the damage is a quasi-real memory of existing wounds, this damage can’t be reduced or prevented (such as by the shield other spell).

If the target of a phantasmal reminder attack succeeds at the Will save to disbelieve the memory loop and either has natural telepathy or is wearing a helm of telepathy, the memory of damage automatically rebounds to affect you. You must immediately attempt a Will save to disbelieve; if you fail, you take half the spell’s damage yourself.
Note that the Bard gets it at a +1 spell level penalty. After all, this spell might be too good otherwise. I guess if you use Extend Spell and Maximize Spell you can get it to hit twice for decent damage (especially with Intensify Spell for a higher damage cap) assuming you fixed the shitty double save with Resilient Illusions discovery or some other stunt, but holy shit is this one lousy spell.
Well, found a stunt for it. With the Magaambyan Arcanist prestige class and Blissful Spell metamagic, you can extend the duration of this spell by 1 round per Magaambyan Arcanist class level using Lasting Goodness (it also gets +1 caster level from Virtuous Spells).

Offline Garryl

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Re: Look at this thing I found in Pathfinder! The bad feats/spells/etc thread
« Reply #278 on: August 07, 2021, 05:41:59 PM »
I don't see what the duration on Phantasmal Reminder actually does. It's functionally an instantaneous effect through and through. It says to see text, but there's nothing in the text about it. The only intent behind it I can conceive of is referencing the time frame in which the subject has to have taken damage to be affected (since the end of your last turn), but even that doesn't make much sense. Durations are for spells whose effects extend past the moment of the initial casting, but nothing about the description has it do anything in that time. The saving throw line is wrong, too; it should be Fort negates, not partial.

Offline Power

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Re: Look at this thing I found in Pathfinder! The bad feats/spells/etc thread
« Reply #279 on: August 07, 2021, 05:57:12 PM »
Really, it's working under the assumption that another round of duration means the Phantasmal Reminder hits again the next round. But it's a bad spell and badly worded too, frankly.