u/Decicio

Decided I’d rather play playdough with my toddler this morning than draft a post, and then realized that due to travel, I probably won’t be posting until close to October. So wanted to give you all a heads up.

Inspired by me taking this break, it did make me wonder what are some of the best uses of 1 month of downtime in PF? What items would you craft? Do you break out the business rules? Is there a particular retraining option that is powerful? Let me know!

Hopefully we get a variety of options for a variety of character types too, haha. Don’t want this all to be “my level 20 wizard would hide in his timeless demiplane like a sociopathic introvert to craft for the equivalent of 10 years in solitude”. So maybe what is discussed isn’t the most optimized use of a month period, but perhaps the best thing optimized for your character?

Welcome to Max the Min Monday! The series where we take some of Paizo’s weakest, most poorly optimized, or simply forgotten and rarely used options for first edition and see what the best things we can do with them are using 1st party Pathfinder materials!

What Happened Last Time?

Last week I didn't post because I had an early appointment at the DMV.... ugh.

Last time we discussed Monkey Style. While the feat chain wasn't the most cohesive in focus, that didn't change the fact that there are some builds that could use it to great effect. Vexing Dodgers and Mousers saw a lot of utility out of it, whereas Style Shifter uses it to add wis to damage. We could also make better use of abilities and items that come with the drawback of knocking us prone, such as a double hackbut or the roll with it feat. And even more!

So What are we Discussing Today?

Today we are discussing u/darkdiashi's nomination of the Charging Stag Style feat chain!

As this is another style feat chain, there is some overlap in discussion with last time. If you want a breakdown into the general weaknesses of style feats, see the Monkey Style post.

So to start off, the base feat of Charging Stag Style has a pretty hefty list of prereqs. Dex 13, Dodge, Mobility, and Improved Unarmed Strike means that you'll most likely want a decent list of bonus feats to even go down this route. But as we'll see soon, the prereqs are thankfully front loaded.

The benefit is fairly straightforward and useful. You're allowed to charge through difficult terrain and enemy spaces, and can even take a single 90 degree turn during the charge. But it does come with the rather large caveats that you still must be able to see your target before initiating the charge (so no 90 degree corners around hallways), and you can only take a single attack at the end even if you have an ability that says otherwise such as pounce. Considering pounce is the end goal for most charge builds, that is a steep price. Note that that restriction is on at all times while in the style, even if you don't use it, so you'd spend a lot of swift actions toggling between this and a pounce equivalent ability if that is your goal.

Next is Stag Horns which thankfully doesn't have any new prereqs besides Charging Stag Style itself. This new ability lets you make a free action grapple check if your attack at the end of a charge was a successful unarmed strike attack. It also doesn't provoke an AoO. While a grapple is an attack, this extra grapple check isn't triggered by the charge but rather by the successful unarmed strike so shouldn't be blocked by Charging Stag Style's limitation of one charge attack. But it also means that it wouldn't get the +2 to hit.

Finally we're finishing with Stag Submission. While in the style, if you succeed at the grapple check to pin your opponent, you may either knock them prone or automatically deal your unarmed strike damage against them.

So... yeah. Not too much commentary on this today. It starts off as a charge focus feat, and then shifts to a grapple build one. Which nearly all grapple builds (with a few exceptions) want to close into melee so a charge benefit isn't a terrible option for them. But with the prereqs required delaying access, there is the question of which builds would best benefit from this. Let's find out!

Nominations!

I’ll post a comment below which contains the rules for nominations. Please keep all nominations as replies to that comment to have them considered. As this post makes obvious, we're leaving our weekly format to a more... whenever I think it is feasible format. But the series isn't dead yet!

Previous Topics:

Previous Topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/search?q=title%3A%22Max+The+Min+Monday%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all

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First off, I loved the Choose Your Own Cousin episode, and love discourse around it. I saw it as a fresh take and that Wade did a great job injecting horror into what is normally a very goofy show. It was still goofy, but unlike other episodes it didn’t feel like the goofiness derailed the story. And from the comments I’m seeing, many of you agree. This was a special episode, and one I hope we discuss for some time.

Now I’m actually a pretty big fan of horror games and media. I even wrote my MA thesis about TTRPG actual plays and games, so I’ve run into several shows and games that I was reminded of while listening to this episode. And this is a compliment! I’ve loved Distractible since day 1, but I always saw it as more of a goofy discussion show than a roleplaying one. But this episode reminded me a lot of the really great roleplaying media I’ve loved for years.

So I figured I’d share some of these in case people who aren’t as familiar would like to explore this genre more. Note, I’m unaffiliated with all these, just a fan.

If you want to play a game like this yourself:

- Try Call of Cthulhu. It is a classic Lovecraftian Horror TTRPG that Wade’s story fit the vibe of extremely well. The main game is of course intended to be played with friends, and is very fun. If you want you can write you own story hook like he did, or they have a bunch of prewritten adventures you can hop into that are very good.

But if you prefer to play solo / liked his choose your own adventure vibe, they also write a series of “Alone” books which are a hybrid between Tabletop-Role Playing and choose your own adventure. So you still have a character, but often you are given choices like in a choose your own adventure book… it’s just that often some of those choices are locked between rolling certain skills. They are quite fun. Wade’s story from this episode had a lot of similarities to “Alone Against the Flames” specifically, which is included in the Call of Cthulhu starter set if anyone is interested. But other “Alone” books are pretty popular, such as “Alone Against the Dark”.

- Play Delta Green. Delta Green is basically Call of Cthulhu meets X-Files. You play as secret agents within a government conspiracy to keep cosmic horrors and the existence of aliens hidden from the general public. If you like reading about conspiracy theories, this game system is insanely fun. But it can get dark.

- Play the Final Girl board game series. This is a solo board game inspired by classic slasher films. You have to buy the base set, and then each story is an add on purchase. Extremely well reviewed and popular. I must admit I haven’t played myself yet but it is on my list!

- Betrayal at House on the Hill Board game. This is another classic board game and one of my group’s favorites. You explore a haunted house, adding room by room as you take turns. Creepy stuff happens, and then partway through the game the “haunt” activates which starts a different story based upon what combination of things you’ve found are. So there are like 50 different scenarios with fun concepts, usually involving one player betraying the others. While just a board game, you can take the story up a notch by just roleplaying your choices with your friends if you feel comfortable doing so.

If you’d like to listen to more podcasts like this…

- Push the Roll. Ross Bryant is an amazing actor, improviser, and role player. Those of you who watch Dropout will probably recognize him. But he also plays a lot of TTRPGs for podcasts. His own show he hosts is all about improvised Call of Cthulhu adventures. They literally randomly draw a title hook from a list and his players quickly make characters and he puts them through an improvised horror story he makes up on the spot. Each story usually lasts 2-3 1 hour episodes and are very good.

- Get in the Trunk / Time for Chaos. Both podcasts from the Glass Cannon Network (note I’m a part of the fan subreddit, so I really love this network, but I’m not directly affiliated). They are playthrough shows of Delta Greeb and Call of Cthulhu respectively. Both hit a similar blend of humor and seriousness that I feel like Wade did a great job of in Choose Your Own Cousin. There’s definitely some fluctuation in which is more serious or funny, but still are great shows. The network also released a bunch of shorter live Call of Cthulhu shows if you want to dip your toes into an episode or two without committing, though note that the vibes of the live show are different (but still good) compared to their studio material.

- Pretending to Be People. I haven’t yet gotten around to listening to this show personally, but it is one of the highest recommended Delta Green shows out there, so figured I’d mention it.

If you want to read a book like this…

- I admit, the classic choose your own adventure books can still be fun even as an adult, though perhaps that is nostalgia speaking. That said, my favorites for this sort of spooky vibe were always the Goosebumps “Reader Beware: You Choose the Scare” series. It’s been almost two decades since I read one of that series, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt… but hey, if Wade can revisit animorphs then maybe we should check those out again?

Not sure if any of this will interest anyone but wanted to share just in case. This episode was truly a joy as a fan of similar media. If you found out you liked this episode in particular, then know there’s a whole world of similar content out there for you to enjoy.

Welcome to Max the Min Monday! The series where we take some of Paizo’s weakest, most poorly optimized, or simply forgotten and rarely used options for first edition and see what the best things we can do with them are using 1st party Pathfinder materials!

What Happened Last Time?

Last time we discussed the sleuth investigator! Most of the discussion was on how it can be effectively used as a dip to increase your grit / panache pool and gain some additional ways to recoup said pool. There were also discussions on multiclassing to make the best use of the deeds and class features you keep, feat combos that go well with your improved skills, and more!

So What are we Discussing Today?

Today we are examining the Monkey Style feat chain, as nominated by u/CobaltMonkey (username checks out). Style feats in general range from the amazing to the weird and niche, and this one is probably one of the more niche ones. So let's dive in!

Before we even look at the chain itself, a quick reminder on how style feats work in general: you need to spend a swift action to enter the style, can only be in styles in combat (so no entering a style before initiative is rolled), and barring some specific archetypes can only be in one style at a time. They often have decently long chains and sometimes complex prereqs, meaning many styles require you sorta make them a main character focus if you want to really take them. These reasons combined are the reasons why, more than once, I've seen nominations for "all the style feats". Though that is obviously way too broad a topic that would result in the same 3 or 4 really good ones to just be mentioned over and over again, so I very much appreciate that we're examining a single chain today.

The base feat requires Wis 13, IUS, Acrobatics and Climb 5, so already we have to wait a bit before entering the style. But at least those prereqs aren't terrible to come by.

You get to add your wisdom to acrobatics checks (note importantly that this benefit does not require you to be within the style. It is always on which is nice, especially since you'll probably want that bonus out of combat too.) While in the style, you take no AC or attack roll penalties while prone and can crawl or stand up from prone without provoking AoOs. You can also "kip up" from prone as a swift action for either a DC 20 acrobatics check or 2 stamina points, if you have access to stamina.

The next feat in the chain, Monkey Moves requires Monkey style and, Acrobatics and Climb 8. So again, not horrible on prereqs at least. While using Monkey Style, you get your wisdom bonus on climb checks. Note that unlike the previous bonus that was always on, this only applies in combat, making it much more limited. You can climb and crawl at half your speed, you can take a 5 foot step by jumping, crawling, or climbing, and you keep your AC bonus while climbing. Also, it lets you 5ft step as a swift action after unarmed striking an opponent 2+ times on your turn, even if you've previously moved (though if you are hitting them more than once, that is unlikely. I suppose this means you could take two 5ft steps though?).

Another note is that the stamina benefit gives you a climb speed equal to your land speed until the start of your next turn if you spend 5 stamina points, and nothing says you must be in the combat style to turn that on. So that could help a lot with the fact most of the benefits are combat only.

Finally, we've come to Monkey Shine, the final feat in the chain. This time the prereqs require Stunning Fist and Acrobatics / Climb 11.

Now while in the style, if you succeed on a Stunning Fist you may enter (as a free action) and share the space of your enemy. This doesn't provoke AoOs from you but it will provoke an AoO from your opponent if they exit your square even if the method normally doesn't provoke. While sharing the space, you get +4 dodge to AC and +4 bonus on melee attack rolls against that opponent as well. So nice bonuses, but it requires a successful use of a limited-use feat to pull off.

The stamina benefit allows you to, instead of taking an AoO when the opponent moves out of your shared space, follow along with their movement at a cost of 2 stamina per 5 feet moved. Which I suppose is situationally helpful if you prefer to keep the buffs / probably mess up your opponent's reach instead of getting the free attack.

So yeah, that's the monkey style feat line. To be honest, I can see some benefits from each of the feats, though each feat is different enough from the others that it seems hard to make the whole useable on a character. So let's see what you all come up with!

Nominations!

I’ll post a comment below which contains the rules for nominations. Please keep all nominations as replies to that comment to have them considered. As this post makes obvious, we're leaving our weekly format to a more... whenever I think it is feasible format. But the series isn't dead yet!

Previous Topics:

Previous Topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/search?q=title%3A%22Max+The+Min+Monday%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all

Mobile Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/search?q=%22max+the+min+monday%22&restrict_es

Welcome to Max the Min Monday! The series where we take some of Paizo’s weakest, most poorly optimized, or simply forgotten and rarely used options for first edition and see what the best things we can do with them are using 1st party Pathfinder materials!

What Happened Last Time?

Last time, to celebrate this series' return from the dead, we discussed methods of returning from the dead. And there was actually some really fun discussions about more obscure methods and even ways to cheese the proceess!

So What are we Discussing Today?

Today, after a whopping 4 months, we're finally doing u/blacktrance's nomination of Sleuth Investigator! Sorry for the delay.

If you've ever read the swashbuckler or gunslinger entry and gotten to the bit that states that Panache, Grit, and Luck all act as the same mechanic and a shared resource, but wondered where the heck Luck comes from, well this is it, and it is sorta the main focus of the archetype.

You get a pool equal to CHA mod per day which can be refilled by rolling a Nat 20 on a knowledge or sense motive check, or rolling 6+ on an inspiration roll. These are a bit more common to force than crit hits or killing blows, so there is a caveat that the GM must state the check rolled must be "significant enough" to warrant getting luck back. So right off the bat this is going to be a very "your table may very" mechanic, especially since very little examples are given for the GM to draw off of.

Ok, but a pool of resources you can use for a bunch of things can be useful. What did we lost for it?

Alchemy.

Yep, all our alchemy, including the ability to take alchemist discoveries and swift alchemy. We've lost our entire 6th level psuedo spellcasting for this one mechanic. Daaaang. Yep, pretty clear to see why this ended up on this list. I mean... do I need to really explain why trading an entire extract list is a bad idea?

But maybe Luck has a bunch of unique and useful options to make up for the loss. What deeds do we get to spend luck on?

At 1st level we get 3 deeds.

Daring lets us add a retroactive, exploding 1d6 to an acrobatics, climb, escape artist, fly, ride, or swim check.

Opportunistic evasion gives us evasion... that costs luck to actually turn on, so a downgrade from the rogue's version. But at least we get evasion in some form, unlike most investigators.

We finish level 1 wth Sleuth's Initiative, which gives us a passive +2 on initiative checks as long as we have 1 point in our pool. We also can draw a single light or one-handed weapon as part of initiative check if we have quickdraw which... to be honest I'm not sure what the benefit would be? Maybe if we have a weapon that gives an AC buff or something? Or maybe if we're TWF and want to start combat with a full attack? Seems extremely niche though.

At 4th level, we get three more.

Make It Count is probably one of the better deeds we've seen. For 1 point, when using studied strike, we can apply any investigator talent we don't already know that applies to a studied strike and which we qualify for. This actually offers a lot of flexibility for our studied strikes. There are 18 different talents this applies to, though of course we won't always have the prereqs for all 18 at once. And, it eases our need to take studied strike talents, allowing us to prioritize other talents.

Run Like Hell lets us spend 1 luck point to get a +20 foot bonus speed for 1 minute and +4 ac on rounds where we move further than our base speed. It is worth noting that this shouldn't be confused with the Run Like Hell dare, which can be used when your pool is empty, only gives +10 ft speed, but gives you a point if you are 100 ft away from an enemy. Funnily enough, though dares state they can be used by gunslingers and swashbucklers and obviously interact with thesee shared pools... RAW I don't think a sleuth can take them since they aren't listed, and it explicitly states they don't count as a grit or panache user for feat prereqs. But that's very much a decent RAI calling to let them do so.

Sorry, got off track there.

Finally, we get second chance. Spend 1 point to reroll an inspiration die or daring deed die. Doing this prevents a 6 on the roll from giving us back luck.

And that's it. Six deeds to replace the entirety of alchemy... yeah that's a min. But maybe we can do some crazy strike combos, effectively turning us into a brawler investigator? Or maybe some other deed has unintended combos we can exploit? I genuinely don't know but am excited to see what you come up with!

Nominations!

I’ll post a comment below which contains the rules for nominations. Please keep all nominations as replies to that comment to have them considered. As this post makes obvious, we're leaving our weekly format to a more... whenever I think it is feasible format. But the series isn't dead yet!

Previous Topics:

Previous Topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/search?q=title%3A%22Max+The+Min+Monday%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all

Mobile Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/search?q=%22max+the+min+monday%22&restrict_es

Welcome to Max the Min Monday! The series where we take some of Paizo’s weakest, most poorly optimized, or simply forgotten and rarely used options for first edition and see what the best things we can do with them are using 1st party Pathfinder materials!

Wait you’re back??? I thought you died!

Yeah it has been…. A long time. Not quite as long as that time I “retired” the series only to pull a Michael Jordan and cancel retirement, but definitely several months. There were reasons for the gap, but they aren’t really relevant to the post. If anyone is curious enough to know why, I’ll post it in a comment.

Long story short, I’m in a place where I can start doing these again, albeit in a different timezone. So they’ll likely get posted later in the day than previously.

But what happened last time all those months ago?

A staggering 83 days ago, we had one of the hastily thrown together not-really-Max-the-Min posts about curses which was a lot of fun. Most of the comments talked about the mathematical difference between the penalties to numbers and the 50% chance of just not acting each turn, though some weirder curses were mentioned.

Our last true Max the Min was over 3 months ago. Which is crazy. It was about the Swarm Fighter. There was discussion about multiclassing options to optimize damage output, combo builds with friends to be more synergistic, and of course a lot of discussion on ways to use Racial Heritage to open up the class for different race combos.

So what are we discussing today?

I’m hijacking today’s post since it has been too long to talk about coming back from the dead. I know Slueth investigator won the nomination, it hasn’t been forgotten. We’ll do that next time.

Anyways in a combat heavy game, there are bound to be character deaths. But following an old tradition that was added early to the game when a player playing with Gygax or Arneson (I legit can’t remember which, but I do remember reading a history that included this moment), the game does provide ways for your character to come back should you be attached.

Now how is this a min? Well first off… dying is of course a min in the first place. It’s something you want to avoid if at all possible. Then there comes the fact that most methods are expensive, require access to mid to higher level casters, and potentially rare resources and the decision to come back becomes a difficult one.

Tack on the meta observation that, if your gm lets you bring in a new character with full level progression and WBL adjusted gear, then you likely would be becoming richer as a party if you bring in a new character (as long as your previous character’s corpse was lootable).

But sometimes that price / meta price is worth it to keep some narrative consistency. Or sometimes the specific method of coming back to life is crazy enough to add in new narrative flavor. Either way, I want to know what ways exist to bring back a character, perhaps what some of the consequences could be, and if there are any crazy combos that actually turn this process into a good thing.

No Voting this Week

As I said above, next time we’re doing the sleuth since that was the vote winner last time we had a vote

I remember this conversation coming up years ago, and back then I nominated Betrayal at House on the Hill needed a Scooby Doo tie in… and then they actually made it.

Anyways, curious on what people would do nowadays. For purposes of discussion, if you wanna talk about mechanical changes you’d want to make to make it fit the theme better go ahead, but the overall game needs to still be recognizable.

As many of you are aware, in the bant of an episode of Blood of the Wild, Jared created a mess making, no pants wearing, third person speaking character with the intent to be purposefully off-putting and loathsome.

It worked so well that Reddit’s automod now occasionally flags mention of his name as harassment.

This is apparently very inconsistent (we had a post about this character just the other day where almost all the comments were allowed). But if the automod flags something as harassment, we as mods cannot even reinstate the comment.

So… yeah, if you mention this particular character by name and it gets removed, know that it was probably the automod and that you didn’t actually break any rules. Unless you did, in which case shame on you.

Feel free to nominate appropriate pseudonyms that will hopefully fly under the AI overlord’s notice below.

I was actually planning on doing a regular Max the Min today… except I was coming home from vacation yesterday and our travel was cursed.

You may skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t want details about *how* cursed my travel was and want to go straight to the Pathfinder stuff.

First off, my wife had started the process of changing her maiden name to married name on the airline account ages ago but it apparently didn’t take because they issued her ticket in her maiden name. So had to call customer service to fix it, and they accidentally unreserved her window seat next to me in the process… and promptly sold it and shoved her in a different middle seat. Then the reservation was broken, so she couldn’t actually check in or access any mobile tickets, so we had to leave an extra hour early to go to the front desk to check in, where the helpful worker had to spend 20 minutes on hold with their Data Recovery Center helpline because not even she could un-bork whatever customer service had done. Then we had tried to check in for our rental car early, except the automated system didn’t recognize the driver license or maybe the face photo and the system doesn’t allow retries. One and done and if the ai doesn’t like you, you have no choice but to go to the front desk for more time. Oh well, deal with that when we get there. Desk checks my wife in and hands her a physical ticket, we go through security…. And the x ray machine ate her ticket! Somehow it got blown out of the tray. We couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of that as we told security. He sticks his hands into the machine and comes back with a fistful of tickets and baggage claim receipts… none were hers. So got a reprint and thankfully got on the plane, car reservation desk was great, got to our vacation fine.

… Then there was the return trip. We had anticipated the lack of a seat reservation (which again… we had paid extra for) and made sure to speak with a real agent to get us seated next to each other which was annoying but better than being apart for the 3.5 hour flight. But when we went to the desk again to check in… apparently the reservation borking had deleted the fact we’d paid for a checked bag. Thankfully we had receipts. Went through security nice and early enough to have lunch, got boarded on the plane, excited to head home. Immediately deboarded the plane due to a mechanical issue. Flights delayed over 4 hours. Have mild issue with food voucher the airline gave us as an apology (admittedly my fault this time). Finally get on flight, get home, order uber to drive us home…. Uber stops moving even though it was just 4 mins away. Driver messages us and asks us to cancel. His car broke down in the parking lot. Second uber gets us home… at 2 am, 6 hours later than planned. We certainly felt cursed. So yeah I have basically no sleep or brain power to draft a real max the min.

So yeah, let’s talk curses! What are the nastiest ways to use them, and I’m talking offensively and potentially in other ways if you can figure out the cheese.