Talk:Germain's Character Sheet (Pathfinder)

Alright, if you have not followed the SW game... well, I haven't done the reckoning, but there is a better than decent chance the Silverwalkers will not be seen again in Wydmoor again in 1401. And possibly never again. Resolving the Wydmoor conflict is central to advancing the plots of all the other games. I mean, so far it seems all of those games are scheduled in geologic time, but at some points Gnob's Folly is going to get off that island and get to the Bandit Kingdom. Anyway, I just want to resolve it since it's the endgame is really the worst time emotionally to run into a stall. Since you're guaranteed to be going at this one alone, there's no reason we can't advance this one way or the other. Slitherrr has graciously agreed to step into the shoes of Marhagarain for the inevitable tactical engagements and Egg is not a good enough wizard to be really complicated to bot yet. This is achievable. I mean, we pull off scheduling 6 and 7 person synchronous games, there's no reason two people an a pinch hitter can cutscene and setpiece their way to some kind of resolution and new status quo. I'm happy to randomly generate a conclusion, I do so love RNG. -gm

I mean, besides. Are you not anxious to stretch your PF legs?

Also note that LE finally dropped the strike force wizard's spellbook with Egg, so now Egg has all those really nice Psionic synergy spells at his disposal. So, you still have a little punch left in the gauntlet. -gm

PS: I think sync is the only way I'm going to play you in ascension. I don't think I've won a single game against you that we played dragged out. I'm wise to your game and adjusting the battlefield accordingly. -gm

Did you not like the Professional rebuild? -gm

Eh, you can read my rambling on the Prof talk page for the full experience, but in the end, I felt like PF addressed the niche that Prof filled. At the core, I thought that Prof was a rogue --DPS ++Tank, or in other words, a more rugged skill monkey. PF gave rogue an HP boost, and a bunch of toughness and general skill talents, so there is no need for that niche. Regarding the leadership stuff, the Noble Scion prestige class was super similar to level 5+ prof. Basically, I thought you could remake a prof almost exactly as a rogue/noble scion, so it just didn't seem unique. --Msallen

Alrighty, after talking to GM, I committed to the spymaster build. Here it is--pretty cool. Here are a couple of notes:

• I had a few too many skill points in the old build, so I had to shuffle a bit
  • Dropping the flavorful but ultimately useless level 1 diplomacy
  • I don't need to capitalize on the extra +2 for bluff/disguise at 10 ranks now, and I still don't want to focus on germain as a shady motherfucker, just very guarded
• Art of Deception is a huge SM buff that I can't afford to give up, so I shifted perform/versatile performance focus back to sense motive
• Urban Forrager was cute, but it wasn't in the original build, and "tracking someone in the city" as I read it means, literally, following where they walk. Gather info/diplomacy seems to be far more relevant a skill for actually tracking down an individual as a detective/lawman in an urban environment would usually do it.
  • I read more on urban forager, the urban ranger archetype, and the survival skill, and I don't think this feat is required for urban tracking after all... I think it's sorts a weird, weak feat that lets you live of urban trash.

No Professional Build (Old Discussion)

If I were to drop profession, I would focus on the Ranger/Bard side of Germain. That would give me a solid skill point total, boost my combat and arcane magic skills quite a bit, but still keep the feel of a street smart and politically cunning sheriff archtype. I could also go Rogue, but I think Germain is more of a support player than DPS, which is why I think bard is the better match. I think the Urban Ranger archtype is a strong match for where I was going with Germain, though. Because of his exposer and influence with Big Politics in Wydmoor, I would look towards the Master Spymaster or Noble Scion prestige classes if I were to go with one. I do think this is a moderate shift from what Germain used to be--he's probably going to have more combat skills, he'll be a proper spellcaster, and a lot more bardic music abilities. He probably will lose some of the extra skills I got in the conversion, but I expect he'll be pretty close to original Germain WRT skills. What do we think? --Msallen

See my notes about Professional on the talk page over there. I tihnk that's a fine conversion, though I think RP wise it's going to be a bit of a funny feeling to see Germain going from being not particularly magically inclined to being a solid gold spellcaster. I think the beefing up of rangers makes sense on both a rules and RP front. -gm

Ok, here is another non-professional version of Germain. It's pretty good--definitely up until I hit level 7, I feel like it matches the G-man pretty close in feel. The master spy stuff was an interesting direction, but it doesn't jive quite the way I had hoped. I was attracted to it because Germain has been looking for a way to guard his thoughts because he feels like he needs to operate with utmost discretion with Naprid and the Guild breathing down his neck. But this really takes Germain deeply into the shady zone, with crazy bluff and disguise skills, but I was more inclined to make him more trustworthy instead of this. Here are the notable conversion changes:

• Bard's versatile performance for Oratory allows you to substitute perform for diplomacy/sense motive. That was Germ's perform, and also his wheelhouse skills, so I focused on perform and ignored the other two except for prestige prereqs. That made up for missing skill points and feats.
• Loss of insightful defense was hard on the AC, and along with the combat expertise changes, he'll be 5 points lower with CE fully engaged, and can't use it at range. This makes it very risky to be on the front line or use the cursed buckler trick, and with feat tightness, I'd prefer to drop combat expertise and buckler and focus on ranged combat.
• There was an urban track feat that thought would be a better match given the more ranger-y focus.

--Msallen

Like I mentioned above, once I got the master spy stuff specced out, I didn't like it as much. I took a closer look at the Noble Scion class, and this is much, much closer to 3.5 Germain. This class has leaderhip, diplomacy, and sense motive buffs, plus a bunch of bonus skill and influence feats, and feels very close to professional/dragoman in many (although not all) ways. How do you feel about me taking this? Noble blood has always been part of Germ's backstory (although displaced nobles on his mother's side) and Wydmoor is pretty fast and loose with the concept of nobility anyways, but is that enough justification to meet the special requirement? Also, the level 1 stipend power is a little weird for him, although I think if we made it something more obscure like "political capital" with the geese and the merchants and not actual gold, or just got rid of it all-together, it might be ok? I don't know. There is a lot about that class that works, but it's not a perfect match. If I don't take some sort of non-magical prestige class, I'm definitely going to want to take the route of bard, which will turn Germain into much more of a spellcaster, which I am trying to avoid. Here are other more divergent classes that I'd consider: Pathfinder Chronicler (it's not my first choice, but it has some elements I like), Grand Marshal (it's geared around guns now, but could be retooled), Sleepless Detective (the alchemy element is weird, but otherwise it's a solid detective direction to take him), --Msallen

Feat Discussion

Master of the Ledger

I would like to make a homebrew version of this, based on my own thoughts, the old Al-Quadim mercantile system, and our discussions on talk page. Change the cap by an order of magnitude OR make the cap dependent on (character level/city size). However, I would rather see at least the token chance of loss. I suggest our old friend the d4. Something like 1=lose 25% of investment, 2=no significant gain, 3-4=maybe +15 or +20 percent, depending on what the mathomancers decide is reasonable. Or even nested d4s! The loss is like 1d4+1x10% and the gain is like 1d6x5% or, again, whatever the mathomancers suggest. I want there to be some risk, but with the overall trajectory being upward. I would also think it would be investment per "settlement" instead of "market", which is still a fuzzy term, but far less so. -gm

I'm cool with that, although for the record I was more interested in the flavor and the skill buffs than the actual financial part of the feat. If it was just a more powerful gold engine without the skill stuff, I probably wouldn't take it. --Msallen

Well, in that case, fucks it! Suits me as in, then. absalom 17:09, 26 February 2013 (EST)

Here is a bit of a goofy take on Germain for pathfinder. The skills stayed relatively the same (except for major hits to diplomacy from the sync nerf), with a minor bump to knowledges, and a major bump to new skills: appraise, profession (laywer), and stealth. Saves took a hit, although it seems like that's in keeping with the system, and combat took a small boost from the addition of more ranger levels. He's definitely got a couple of more weird abilities now, the most interesting from a character perspective being the "master of the ledger" feat at level 11. He's definitely more of a professional laywer/lawman with this feat, the urban ranger skills (favored terrain and track), and the investigation professional development skill. What do you think? --Msallen

Master of the ledger is definitely weird. 100gp investments? What is his investment, a hundred pairs of shoes? -Slitherrr

Well, the root profession is Laywer, so I think "investments" could be pretty broad. He's definitely not going to be running a law firm because that is an absurd anacronism, but business law has been a pretty big part of the SW campaign (Aarasti's collapse, the Kathkallan investigation, LE's arcane mark weirdness, funding the Templar church, etc). I'd think this would represent an ability to invest in a variety of businesses to capitalize on favorable political climate, protect his holdings through legal channels, and on the more shady side, weaken competing businesses by pushing legislation or selectively enforcing laws. Something like Johnny Behan from the beginning of Tombstone--a lawman who is invested in local businesses and using his political clout to secure their success. --Msallen

When I say, "Weird," I actually just mean in the context of the system. It actually fits Germain. I was leaning more towards the fact that 100gp is a paltry amount. I mean, average 12.5 free gp a month (barring catastrophe, and assuming you can visit the market every month) isn't NOTHING, but it's not a whole lot. -Slitherrr

Ooo. Yeah, the 100gp cap is probably the weird part. With that cap, you'd average 12.5gp per month through investments, and would make a minumum of 32gp per month using your profession directly. At any level where you can swing 6 skill ranks, the cash is hardly worth it from either use of profession. Anyways, I liked it for the skill buffs and flavor. --Msallen

And it doesn't even compound--the feat explicitly says that you may only invest up to 100 gp per market, and that each visit earns you 25% of gp (not "increases the investment by"). Feasibly there could be several markets in a small area, say four markets in a large city, and maybe five surrounding villages with a market each that are all roughly a day away from city and each other. That still takes up a full week of the month in traveling to make 112.5 gp. I guess the real lesson is that it's tough to be anyone but a hero chosen by Fate to have all kinds of cool dungeons to loot :P -Slitherrr

I was thinking about this more, and I think it really depends on lifestyle upkeep costs for the game. These used to be in the DMG for earlier editions, but I'm not sure they are still around. I did find some links for homebrew versions here and here. Both these guys put upper middle class at 50-100gp per month, so with that math, you could spend one week a month maintaining a high-quality life and have 3 weeks leftover for other stuff. It's not very useful in Jones's campaigns since 1 year in meatspace is about 1 week in game, but for campaigns with more downtime, that income doesn't seem to out of line. In any case, it's also 100gp one time cost to get a stack of skill bonuses when you are out and about in your city, which is pretty good even without the nominal income. --Msallen

I think ideally it'd be a function of the population of the city where you are investing. You can make more in a town of 30,000 than you can the farmers market in a hamlet of 300. -gm

Right, and the feat waves at that from afar by talking about multiple markets in a town, although it doesn't really get into the fact that number of markets is a terrible measure, being a single market in a capital city might have ten times more people than the entire town that contains a market somewhere else. In any case, it looks like we're agreed that it's kind of a head-scratching rule for the feat. -Slitherrr

Voice of the Sibyl

Re: voice of the sibyl... do we like that feat? It's a little odd and looks like its very much a regional feat, but I took it since it was in the pdsrd. Do we approve of that one? Without it, I'd be a good bit shy of non-PF diplomacy levels, although I expected that due to the syn nerf. --Msallen

This campaign really doesn't take advantage of the brokenness of Diplomacy as its displayed in the rules, so I don't see why we should really have a problem with it. +9 is a lot, but you need a 30-rank investment to get all of that--otherwise, it's just slightly better than the +6 skill focus gives. -Slitherrr

Yeah, I actually don't have a problem with any of the regional feats that seem balanced. I thought this one was perfect for Germain, and goes a long way towards replacing some of that lost Dragoman skillset if, as I expect to be the case, that does not make the conversion. I always reserve the right of refusal for stuff from any sourcebook - and PF sourcebooks are even more dodgy than 3.5's were - but I don't see any problem here. -gm

Misc

Correction: I compared skills apples to apples, and they are, on the whole, better in pathfinder. The wheelhouse skills are about the same, but I was able to add perception to that list, and I also flushed out the skill list a good bit with great support skills like heal, support, knowledge (dungeoneering), profession (lawyer), and stealth at solid bonuses. --Msallen

Yeah skills in PF seem to be a solid gain in general. -Slitherrr

Tweaking:

• Combat Expertise got a much-deserved nerf, and now defensive fighting/total defense is probably just as good for Germain. Do you still threaten/flank when you use total defense? I read through the combat section and it looks like you do, but it seems odd. Regardless, if I drop this feat, it free's up a slot.
  • Lots of stuff was nerfed, and nerfed does not mean gone or broken. This is not an opportunity to rebuild from scratch. Conversions are supposed to be as close as possible - you have to keep any feat. I feel zero badness about this, since everyone is picking up at least one Feat anyway. -gm
    • I'm cool with that. I tried to be pretty faithful level-to-level except for the ranger/professional swap. You ok with that change? --Msallen
• Rhetorical Flourish seems more germain-ish than Careful Speaker