My Top Three Characters

"Tomorrow is the dawning of a new day. ONE WITHOUT YOU IN IT!"


I was talking to Ray and he asked people for their top three characters. I urge everyone to answer this question in their own way, because it's a lot of fun looking back. I didn't respond immediately to him, because this question kinda fucked me up for a little bit. I've played so many characters with so many people. I started to wonder how you should even quantify this question. Is a character less valid if you only played them in a short game? Hell, I have characters I love that saw ten or fewer game sessions. Fuck me, do NPCs count? For sake of sanity, I'm just going to talk about favorite NPCs separately. Should you let drama or even the game's plot affect your decision? Sorry to say I did, even if that's not very fair. I rarely end up hating my characters, but some that I really like were either fucked with too much or were in games that were too awful, and it makes me not enjoy remembering them.

I'm rarely masturbatory on this blog, so I hope ya'll don't mind me doing it this time. Here we go, in no particular order, because otherwise it'd feel like picking my favorite kid.


Elle Arcineau. Nobody who's played a game with Elle in it or even heard of the character is surprised by this pick, I think. She was the first time I decided to challenge myself with a character, due to online, text based games letting you flex better without feelings of social anxiety or embarrassment. I picked a lot of traits that directly opposed the ways I usually play. I don't like casters and favor melee, so she's a ranged controller modeled after Green Lantern. I favor large, broad and strong characters, so she's five two and slender. I play wilderness types, she's a rich, ambitious city dweller. I usually hate expies, so I modeled her after a pre-existing character. She's bubbly, easily distracted, I could go on. I put together a ton of traits I usually shy away from and decided fuck it, if I don't click with her I'll just change characters. It was a four-color superhero game, so a rotating cast wouldn't be weird. Luckily, it worked and she remains one of my favorite characters.

Elle is a young CEO of a powerful company who built a fortune due to her insane ambition and a little bit of thanks to insight granted by her mutant powers. She can summon and control candy. The idea was, like Speedball or Paige Guthrie, to take a power that sounds dumb or useless and twist it to her advantage. Candy isn't as funny or dumb when it's white-hot molten sugar sticking like napalm, hundreds of pounds of caramel anchoring you in place or a jawbreaker so tough and flying so fast it can literally break your jaw. So thanks to a super-powered sense of taste and her power, she sold candy patents for nest-egg money then moved into investment. She hired reformed mad scientists and, by the time the game began had moved into being a large tech company. It was surprisingly fun to RP. Her devices led to taking a feat that let her wear any clothing she wanted instantly, and that was a huge amount of fun to watch her fashion sense go down a weird rabbit hole of bright colors, animal patterns and odd mixes.

It was also fun to play someone so hyper and distracted. She's mouthy, and pushy, and aggressively nice. She's comedic. all things I didn't think I'd enjoy as much as I did. She got turned into an elf at one point in the game (It was a modern world but with elves. Just go with it.) and it marked a pretty nice, memorable turn for her. She even had a great romance with another PC, Rela C'rar. And yeah, she was 'involved' with like half the PCs and NPCs in the game in some fashion too, but Rela is the one she married.

I adore Elle, but out of the three characters presented, She's the only one I'm not likely to play again. She's great, but I like the idea that she's happy somewhere with Rela and they act as controllers and leaders for a team.

I have a ton of stuff I could probably share, but I'll keep that for another day. I'll leave you with some of the pieces of artwork of her that were commissioned as a gift.

Elle Arcineau, by Lemonfont

Elle Arcineau, by Valerie Nystrom.

>(@)<

Inkless, Professor of History and Runaway Angel. This game really wasn't THAT long and was plagued by being unable to push forward sometimes, so I guess some people would think it was weird that she made my top three, but I love her pretty dearly. This is another Mutants and Masterminds character, set in a world where magic, mystical things were constantly happening just underneath the surface. She was a professor at a University that both taught and protected those sorts of people who knew the truth and could use magic of their own.

Inkless, or Thessa as she was known once other Professors asked for a more normal name, is literally an angel. She is an eternal being of light that's supposed to live in the Christian idea of Heaven. She was a sort of muse(It's not the same as a Greek muse, I know. Shh.) who was meant to go down to Earth in secret and urge people on to greater things. As you'll start to see, I love Inkless as a person but I also love all of the themes that came together to make her. She "ran away" from her duty in Heaven because she didn't feel like she was making an impact. She started to dread the idea that she can only ever do what she was made for. That nobody can truly defy God's design. The catalyst? a well-meaning Archangel told her she was doing a good job and that she was appreciated.

I think everyone knows how bad that can fucking sting when you don't think you've done anything.

She slums around Earth for years, encountering fantasy types of all kinds. This was a world where EVERY Religion was "Right", and it became obvious that Inkless wasn't alone in the way she thought. She eventually gravitated toward the University and became a professor. It wouldn't occur to her until much later that she still wasn't able to escape her "duty" of inspiring people.

Because an eternal being would go insane and perception of time would prevent interaction eventually, Angels(and most other celestial beings) in this world were "locked" at a certain perception, a certain mental maturity. They can change, of course, but it isn't that common. Despite being hundreds of years old, Inkless was eternally locked at nineteen, mentally. This was a source of a lot of her issues. She hated responsibility, but was rabidly protective of her 'kids', to the point that it caused some arguments.

I got to play with some pretty serious and fun themes, all in all. Ones like being able to grow beyond your purpose or duty and giving people a second chance. I don't know when or where, but I'd love to play her again.

>(@)<

Chief Tumbling-Dice. Yeah, this might be a shorter one but he's no less loved. I was a kid when I made him, and he's a D&D 2e character at heart. It means there's neither any heavy themes nor a super interesting build to talk about, even though he had a pretty fun set of stats when he cameoed as an NPC in a 3.5 game.

The name came from a stand-up comedy bit from...I think it was Robin Williams. Obviously it's a pretty crass joke on the fact that Native Americans build casinos. I loved absurdity so I ran with it. He's a devout (and sincere) worshipper of Faerun's Goddess of Luck, Tymora. He also happens to be a lizard-man. He wore a tall top hat with feathers stuffed in the hat band. He had a black vest, black dress slacks(tailored for his tail. Obviously) and no shoes, because you can't put shoes on claws. These days I imagine him as wearing spats like a cartoon character, I won't lie.

We needed a party cleric for Against the Giants, and if I was gonna be forced to play a cleric I was gonna have fun, god dammit. He made zombies(because those corpses are LESSER races, they don't count), happily waded into combat, and had a floating skull he hit people with. I honestly don't remember if that was some kind of item or just me reflavoring the spell Spiritual Weapon.

The Chief also had a thing for random chance. Obviously. It was matched only by his love of bluffing and fooling people. He became an ad-hoc leader for a while(He IS a Chieftain, let's be fair) so he would generally lead the party on where to go. He'd roll dice(he owned several pairs) then decide between however many corridors were there. The joke always was, from the beginning, that he never revealed the method he was using. I waited for someone to question him so I could drop the punchline that the rolling and the decision were 100% removed from each other. He was just rolling dice then deciding where to go. Two completely separate actions.

In twenty years, nobody ever asked. Call me optimistic but I'm hoping there's at least one person out there who had no idea.

In my mind, his whole tribe are named similarly. Names like Cashed-in-Chips, Double-Down, Marks-the-Cards or Bets-On-Pocket-Aces. They run a massive Casino-Church in the middle of swampland, using secret underwater passages to get around faster than their patrons and to hide the riches they've collected in service to Tymora. I'll definitely play him again some day.

>(@)<

Because I'm wimping the fuck out I have some honorable mentions. I've played a ton of beloved characters. They're my babies. Hey, if you don't like it...write your own blog!

Riyo'to. A miqo'te street urchin who learned black magic by spying on classes. It was a lot of fun not only playing a kid, but one who was basically scared of women. That's completely opposite from the usual male miqo'te stereotypes and kind of why Riyo'to exists in the first place, that subversion. He grew up with fifteen sisters. You'd be scared of them too!

Seras Heartstring. Seras needs a rebuild mechanically, but he was a blast. He's a good person, but kind of the male equivalent to a ditzy blonde. He was a comedy character, with tons of jokes surrounding his feminine looks(He can be mistaken for a woman. I figured that was valid for an Aasimar) and that he was a priest of fertility and bounty. It was my first time since Elle playing a comedy character and I feel like it worked really well. He's definitely due for more time and another game.

Blind Mary. You'd think more Vampire characters would come up, and while I've played a lot, she's my favorite. Mary had an interesting life, from Latino gang member, to devout Nun, to Lasombra shovel-head. Her faith was never shaken, and in fact she took the vampiric curse as proof that God is Real. She was quiet(maybe too quiet) and I never did enough with what she knew of the Book of Nod, but I loved her. Note: Not actually blind. The nickname was metaphorical, from her gang days.


So that's it, I hope me being wholly masturbatory at least entertained you a bit. If you were hoping to see a character on this list and didn't, don't be sad. I've got so many beloved characters that this was very hard for me, and it was very close.

"Backwards" Character Creation

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."


I kicked around the idea of doing a theme month. I had quite a few post ideas in a row focused on stupid stuff. You've seen two of them, but...well, since the month started with trap monsters and that's not the kind of stupid I meant, I put aside the idea. Well, that and I had a few stupid things to talk about that aren't the jovial kind of stupid. It's not really giggle Ha-Ha stuff. I'm gonna yell the loud funny words about some things that annoy me, and hope that somewhere inside this there's a lesson.


I thought we were done with this one. I talked about it a few times by now, but always inside another post somewhere. The people I knew who were the worst with this no longer game with us. This is the idea that there's a certain order to the steps of generating a character and that anything that bucks this trend is backwards or wrong. To be specific, this is the idea that you complete a character's background and personality before you ever touch their mechanics.

I have several problems with this.

This happens because most people believe the role-play and story of a pen and paper RPG is its most important aspect. They may even go so far as to believe that the rules and mechanics exist only in service of that. I've certainly met very many people who'd say that openly. So, when they make a character(or an encounter, an NPC, or anything) the 'idea' isn't just the most important thing to them: It's the only thing that matters. We talked about unoptimized or deliberately 'bad' characters before, and this is where that starts too. Assuming we don't attribute the malice, spite or other negative things to this practice which are often(but not always) present, they 'accept' a bad character because they're using the mechanics solely to fit to their pre-existing concept.

Before I continue, let's talk about kink shaming. This is whenever you make someone feel bad for what they're sexually attracted to. Most people don't really know what they're doing when this happens. Some fetishes are just funny to outsiders, you know? So we see adult baby fetish, sissies, or even basic BDSM fetish and laugh our guts out at how dumb it is. It's okay to think it's funny on some level, obviously. We can't help that. However, when you go too far or worse, start criticizing or mocking it seriously, you're making someone else feel bad for something they can't help.

So yeah, I'm making that comparison. We're going there.  People can't help what they enjoy and trying to tell them they're playing the game 'wrong' when it doesn't impact anyone else is pretty shitty of you. Even if I had no other point to discuss, this would still be true. Even if they were right and I was wrong, trying to force or convince someone to enjoy something your way still wouldn't be very nice. If a person has a personality, a background and a set of stats when they show up, it isn't impacting your experience.

I'm not gonna pretend we're not talking about a larger issue, though. Mechanics focused theorycrafting, emphasis on mechanics or rules, or even just discussing cool abilities sometimes gets you a reputation as a "munchkin", or at least gets people tsk-tsking at you. I'm often standing in defense of mechanics enjoyment, but only because the other side of this(roleplay focused) is often the aggressor. I firmly believe both are equally important to the hobby and, if you find your group prefers to lean one way or another, it's best to find a system that fits you better. People who love games focused on interpersonal relationships and story focus will love the Apocalypse system. More on that in another post.

So now that everyone knows I'm the man in the middle of this, I'm gonna try to explain where misconceptions are coming from, in no particular order. Now, I (and a lot of people) put together outlines or pregen characters, often without regard for their background or personality. I do sometimes put together backgrounds or other descriptives, but it's rarer. There's several reasons for this. The first is that mechanics are often far more universal. GMs will sometimes introduce house rules that will make you want to change a build, but that doesn't often happen. Most house rules, if they're even introduced, are sweeping changes that you can't 'build' for like "Armor as DR" or its sister rule "Class AC Bonus". Character histories, however, can vary wildly based on the world the game is set in, or even the other player characters. You'll often want to tailor it to specific world concepts or events or include something to tie you to someone else's idea. This happens often enough that I'm often hesitant to fill out character histories, instead keeping them in my head.

Can someone else's character make me want to change a mechanical build? Absolutely! Does that happen as often? Not to me it doesn't. If it DOES happen, is it way easier to alter a build than a history? Absolutely. Maybe it's just me, but shuffling some feats around just doesn't compare to altering a whole story or background.

But we should build our characters together. We never do that. We never build characters that work together.

Come with Papa Mousetrap on an uncomfortable little tangent. I used to hear this a lot, usually from people who were annoyed that I showed up with an idea ready. I have to say I've never felt as though I was building a truly complementary character to another person. Even when agreeing to do that. Even when talking, at length, with the party about what to build. Even around people who seriously believe in the (now ancient) idea of the perfect party balance. The whole idea of complementary builds is kind of ephemeral anyway, outside of super deliberate stuff like D20's "Teamwork" feats. Which aren't even very good. What's complementary to someone's character is often pretty arguable, open to interpretation. I feel like a lot of the time I've heard this someone just wanted to drag me down to their (unprepared) level by making me think of a new character.

I always try to do something with the other characters, though. In terms of the role-play aspect of the game. Even if it's themes, or preplanned story points or something. The thing is, it's pretty easy to fit a build into these. That's why I always hesitate to write out backgrounds. Builds and backgrounds can often be treated as separate. Not entirely, of course, but I can usually plug a build in pretty easily. Backgrounds that exist as a collection of ideas and not rote definition can be more easily molded into someone else's concept, adding a family, friend or confidant. A build that is only an idea isn't including wiggle room...it's just undefined. Shuffling around skills, cyberware, feats, powers, et cetera is pretty easy, and often not even required.


Talk about mechanics is often more compelling than backgrounds because it comes from a place that already has structure. It creates rigor that not everyone can include into a discussion of backgrounds, personalities or themes. It's not that mechanics are more fascinating than roleplay, it's that they're easier to talk about. Pure art is often subjective, and mechanics, on some level, aren't. You can argue if you like or dislike a class, but there will be provable facts about it regardless of your opinion.

There's also the idea of inspiration, though. Some people get inspired from different places, and that's obviously where they're going to start with their character. Ray, the person who inspired this whole post, has a reputation for getting excited about mechanics. Usually he'll see a cool ability and want to center a character around it. That's where he starts with his concepts.

He always shows up with a personality and a background. However, because he has this reputation of being excited primarily about abilities, people seem to think he's "doing it wrong" or ignoring the more important aspect of gaming. He's even been through people forcing him to build a character "the right way" in some of the most insulting, condescending GMing I've ever seen.  I won't go into that today, except to say the whole game was a massive disaster.

His characters may have similar themes, but we all do. He shows up with a great character, then gets crapped on. It's happened way less lately, thank god, but it does every once in a while. Ray shrugs it off, though...so why am I always a little protective of him?

You get upset at inequality, right? Everyone does. You ever see someone get chewed out for something you've been doing for years? That's right, me and Ray build characters exactly the same way, most of the time. I'll admit to coming up with a concept first sometimes, but usually that's really deliberate, like my attempt to challenge myself with Elle Arcineau. I nearly always draw inspiration from some cool combination, build, class, or even feat. I do that, then I build outward from there. Class and build gives me ideas on description. Personality. Story beats or backgrounds. I start with mechanics more often than not.

So why does Ray catch shit and I don't? Well, beyond people talking behind my back about this and me never knowing about it, I really couldn't say. He's...louder than me? I guess he is, anyway. Nobody should be lectured on something so trivial as where they got their inspiration, though. Or worse, forced to build a certain way or have their stats dictated solely by what someone else thinks of their predefined background. The arguing and pedantry that goes along with this is so tedious. Real people are weird, and have weird, wild lives but for some reason a lot of people are far more strict with justification of PC stats than they would be with real people. I've heard a lot of it.

I don't think a video store clerk would have anything more than 4 in firearms.

If your character is a pilot he wouldn't have that.

Nobody would install this cyberware on that person.

If you were a Y you wouldn't have Z.

No X would ever Y or Z.

Pointless! Pointless arguing and nitpicking that causes anxiety. I mean, I haven't even gotten into that. Having to play a deliberately inefficient character gives me anxiety. I hate it. I don't like playing a character I know could be better with simple fixes or changes. Even having to live with uneven stat points in D20 annoys me greatly. This is why I like systems with wiggle room where a few skill points, some spell choices or a feat aren't a big deal and can be 'absorbed' into a build to justify a background. I can totally play a noble or diplomat just by pumping ranks into diplomacy. I don't have to be amazing at it, skill points aren't that restrictive. Certainly less restrictive than ability scores. If you told me like someone told Ray that I had to define my entire background and then the GM would hand pick my character's build based on that, I would hate it. I would hate it on the level of not wanting to play. There would be no care put into the build, statistics would feel like they're placed randomly to me, even if they weren't. It would be, at best, a serious drag factor to my enjoyment.

And for what? For someone else's satisfaction that I finally built my character "Right" "For once"? I'm not going to go off onto the tangent of explaining why poor characters don't make for better roleplayers, because I've already done that. Instead I'm just going to close with the same advice that I gave like a year ago when I briefly went into this concept.

So long as someone still shows up with a background and personality and role-plays as seriously as everyone else...let it go, man.

Defense of the Magic Shop II: Stupid Magic Items

Wha'dya need the stupid fuckin' rope for, huh?


Everyone knows I'll defend magic item shops to the death. There's two reasons for this: The first is that in Dungeons and Dragons 3.X and Pathfinder, your magic items are a core part of your character's build and the player should have some level of agency over this. The second is that I fucking love custom made magic items. They add serious flavor to characters and I try to start with one or two every time I make a character. It'd be a shame to give a flat "no" to such cool stuff just because nobody in the group has the magic item creation feats, especially given that they're willing to pay full price. I mean, the alternative is the magic item creation rules and feats and...let's just...gently guide you away from that disaster.

But there's another reason people like making their own magic items. It's because a lot of the magic items in the books are moronic. I don't like using that word lightly, particularly because I've met plenty of mentally challenged people who wouldn't want to be associated with the items I'm about to talk about. So, without further adieu, let's get on with a bald-faced attempt to convince you guys that sometimes people want to make their own magic items because the ones presented in the book aren't worth even close to what they cost!


Efficient Quiver. Yes, this is the magic item that inspired this whole post. It's my poster child for terribly designed magic items. For 1800 gold, it can hold 60 arrows, 18 javelins, and 6 bows. You can flex within these definitions to anything similar in shape. So, does anyone see the problem yet? Can anyone tell me any reason why someone in any pen and paper game ever made or even real life would carry a bow AND javelins? No? That's what I thought. So, for 1800 gold, this quiver holds less arrows than you want it to, up to 6 bows, a compartment which you will never in your life fill to capacity, and one third of it remains completely empty because nobody in their right mind would carry a javelin if they had a bow. Not even people whose only ranged combat option is the javelin carry javelins. And yeah, there's magic javelins that do lightning or whatever, but they're never going to BUY those. Bets are that if they find them in random treasure, they fucking SELL THEM because consumable magic items without spell trigger or spell completion are inordinately expensive. And finally, when have you EVER bitched about how many arrows the archer has on him? Have you ever even looked at his sheet? Would you even know how many arrows a quiver held without looking it up? In Pathfinder, QUIVERS COME FREE WITH THE ARROWS!


Decanter of Endless Water. Okay so, this is kind of a good magic item that's on the list because it's famous for its implications. For 9k gold, you can create up to 30 gallons of fresh or salt water a round. That's every six seconds. That is an ecology ruining amount of water. Given enough time, it could destroy a city. An ecology. Probably a planet. Given the right dungeon, it could probably flood and drown whole encounters. I mean, a decent GM would never let that happen, but as soon as that bright idea comes up, your game becomes an episode of Benny Hill for at least an hour. The decanter is exactly like the Robe of Useful Items: In the hands of a party whose only ever going to use it for obviously intended purpose, it's nice. In the hands of a creative person, though, this item is insane.


Apparatus of Kwalish. This is called Apparatus of the Crab in Pathfinder and is the same item. This thing is so classic that it's honestly pretty unfair that I'm putting it on this list. For a whopping 90k gold, it's a submersible. That's it, for 90 thousand gold you can go under water and slowly derp around at 20ft per round like a complete idiot for three times more gold cost than a permanent Water Breathing item or helm of underwater action, or over twelve times the cost of a Bottle of Air. That's assuming your game ever goes underwater enough to justify those items in the first place. Go on, count up the number of times this item, or ANY underwater item, would have been useful enough to justify the cost of it. I've got 20 years of gaming experience, and lemme tell you: my answer is less than ten.


Rod of Lordly Might. 70k gold. What does it do? Fuck me, it'd probably be easier to list what it doesn't do. Hold person once a day. Fear once a day. 2d4 damage touch attack once a day. It can turn into a +2 light mace, a +1 flaming longsword, a +4 battleaxe, or a +3 longspear. It can turn into a climbing pole, be used to force open doors, and determine magnetic north and approximate depth underground. IT CAN FUCKIN' JULIENNE FRIES AND KEEP YOUR WINDOWS SPOTLESS!

The Rod here is a stand-in so I can point out a common problem. Basically, the more random capabilities you stack onto an item, the higher the price goes and the less the player actually cares about the fucking thing. Many, many items do a cool thing then ruin it by providing a spell or something the player will never use. The Rod of Lordly Might is one of the worst culprits of having a giant laundry list of shit nobody will ever actually use it for. All it does is inflate the cost of the item.


Rod of Alertness. This is an item the size of a light mace that costs 85k gold. You leave it sticking in the ground. Up to like 120 feet away from you. It's not magically sealed to the ground, it's just sticking up out of the dirt. A reliable, huge-range alertness spell or a 1HD goblin's biggest payday ever? You decide.


Elemental Gem. Blah blah consumable item blah blah spell. Nobody's going to buy this overpriced consumable bullshit. Not even if they don't have any other choice. They're so expensive that they often rival the price of an item that lets you use a spell once a day. Players will always, ALWAYS lean toward buying non-consumable items, and the only consumables that will ever see much use are potions, scrolls and wands: all much less expensive than book listed consumable wonderous items.


Chime of Opening. Sure, ten +11 disable device checks is worth 3k gold. Okay. You know, you can easily buy locks that are DC 25? Those would reduce your chances to open the lock on a single charge below fifty percent. So, basically, this is a chime that's for opening the locks on poor people's houses? Because DC 25 is an average lock. Like, the town baker's house would take you two or more charges on this thing to open. Unless you think "Average" implies something other than the majority of people using this sort of lock.

Oh, and yes, I DID gloss over its ability to automatically dispel Hold Portal and Arcane Lock.


Feather Token. 50 gold to make an anchor that disappears in 24 hours? 300 gold for a single use of Animal Messenger? 400 gold for a tree? A boat so big no PC will ever effectively use it AND it STILL fades after 24 hours? These are great! I'm buying ten.


Hand of the Mage. Actually, I secretly love this item. "Hey, can I get a version of this magic item that isn't a severed mummified hand hanging from a chain around my neck?" / "No. No you can't, This is a mass produced magic item and they all look like that."


Robe of Eyes. An incredibly powerful and expensive(120k) magic item that can be disabled with no save by a 0 level spell. Slow clap. Also a shoutout to poor wording that leads the reader to believe the person wearing the robe is blinded and not just the robe itself.


I could go on. I even will, in later posts. However, for now my point is made. A lot of the items in the books are stupid, or created without thought to what an average person would actually want. Imagine the Efficient Quiver is a mass produced consumer product, and it's got a competitor. We'll call it the iQuiver. The Efficient Quiver holds whatever dumb bullshit I explained above, and the iQuiver just straight up holds 180 arrows. Nothing else. Same cost. Which do you really think would get better sales? Exactly.

So, take this to mean that if magic item shops and custom items don't exist, the players are always settling for second best. Instead of going to Longhorn Steakhouse then seeing Die Hard at the movie theater, you're eating at Applebee's and seeing Lethal Weapon IV. You're creating a vague but palpable feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction. Players aren't ever getting what they really want, and all because you think it "makes sense". This will be addressed in a future post, but "That's life" is the worst justification you could make for your actions in a Pen and Paper game. Let's leave it at that for now.

You can mitigate this by talking with the player and trying to provide things they want. Or, you can restore their agency and let them do it themselves with the gold you've given as a reward. To me, it's just simpler.

Trap Monsters: The Vampire

"Oh, Lestat. You deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to Hell."


I love White Wolf. I love Vampire: The Masquerade. The new White Wolf games weren't bad either. Here's a secret, though. I hate vampires. I think they're lame and boring. VtM saves it by offering a billion different kinds of vampires, but even then I internally roll my eyes every time classic vampire stuff comes up. They definitely had a cloud around them of limp, maudlin lamentation of their state before Twilight came out and removed much of the gravitas of the vampire stereotype. It wasn't great before Twilight, and it's certainly not better now. So, I grew up thinking vampires are lame and thinking awesome characters like Dracula were hamstrung by being associated with the vampire stereotype and not elevated by it.

But there is...another reason.

I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a very long time and Vampires have been complete horse shit in every edition I've played. I think them being abjectly unfair monsters calls back all the way to 1e, but I'm not entirely sure. They've had a giant laundry list of horse shit abilities for as long as I can remember, and I would say it probably came to a head in 3.0. Not only that, but Pathfinder carried this torch forward when it likely shouldn't have: a problem I'm seeing more often than I'd like as I analyze the system.

Today I'm doing something a LITTLE different than the other entries in Trap Monsters. This is because Phase Spider and Illithid both have very few but very negative abilities. Not only that, but you can't really remove those abilities without ruining the fantasy of the monster. This isn't the case with Vampire, and underneath all my wailing and gnashing of teeth I'll go into that. However, the other reason is that the vampire template has a huge amount of crap in addition to some negative, fun-sucking abilities, and we need to talk about nearly all of them.  So, I'm basically going in fucking order.


Basic Defensive Capabilities. Vampires get +6 natural armor, DR 10/magic and silver, resistance 10 to electricity and cold, and lightning reflexes, toughness and dodge for free. There's nothing exactly bad here, but we're putting it on the table right now. They get ALL THIS SHIT in addition to the horse shit we're discussing later. This is even in addition to all of the stuff you get from being undead. As you'll see, there's a problem in volume as well as scale. Remember, Vampire is a +2 CR.

Basic Offensive Capabilities. They also get +6 STR, +4 DEX, +2 INT, +2 WIS, +4 CHA. They get alertness, combat reflexes, and  improved initiative. They get an eight point racial bonus to bluff, perception, sense motive, and stealth. They get beast shape into a bat or wolf, and spider climb at will. Again, none of this is trap monster stuff yet, but we're getting close with those fucking skill bonuses. An eight point advantage means the vampire is never going to lose stealth checks OR perception checks against a party, removing stealthy tactics and some other skill tactics from the table. Otherwise, I'm putting this here so you know the pure volume of crap that was stuffed into a TWO POINT CR template. I've gotten to the point of assuming that vampires get a bonus to whatever they want.

Gaseous Form. They can use gaseous form at will, and more importantly, automatically use it at 0 hit points and travel to their casket, where they begin fast healing normally after one hour. So basically your time limit is an hour and like three minutes before you have to start the whole fight over. First off, this is one of the only monsters in the game with an automatic escape. Even the tarrasque falls down at sub-0 hit points and just needs a special method to permanently "kill" it. Remember what I said about monsters escaping? The players are never going to feel good about it. They'll be far more accepting of an escape they could have prevented, though...and this one is just too easy to make unbeatable.

Basically, we're having the phylactery problem again. A Lich's phylactery needs to be destroyed before he can be permanently killed, and it's very easy to make a phylactery impossible to destroy or find. You see this kind of talk all the time in D&D groups, it's a thought experiment. The gaseous form capability is the same thing. After all, he doesn't need to keep you out permanently: Just an hour and change. That's not hard at all, and a GM can easily fall into creating a frustrating experience post-fight by thinking about what's "Logical". See my opinion of "Logical" for more on that. This creates a frustrating experience by detailing the vampire's precautions based on what's "logical" or what's "easy to do but effective" instead of keeping your mind on the challenge you're creating for the party. This is a very common problem to begin with and vampire guides less experienced(or even veteran) GMs into making it worse without realizing it.

Blood Drain. This isn't too bad, it's at least 1d4 con damage and not con drain, but I'm mentioning it because the logical extension of giving a monster an ability they can use when grappling is to make them really good at grappling. Nobody wants to see your luchadore vampire, guys. Nobody thinks this is clever. Nobody thinks it's fun to fight. El Santo kills vampire luchadores for a reason.

Negative Energy Slam. Yeah, they get a slam attack that causes 2 negative levels. This is on top of all the rest of their dumb bullshit and is supported by absolutely nothing in vampire lore or fantasy. Negative levels can KILL YOU in 3.X, but even in Pathfinder they can rapidly lead to a character being battered into worthlessness. Oh, and they heal the vampire. Remember that part of Dracula where he punches some guy in the face repeatedly to heal himself? No? Must just be me.

Children of the Night. Okay, so I'm guessing this ability is just like, a fluff ability because it can't be used in combat, but it creates this weird thing where they're throwing a low CR encounter around. Or, worse, if you've foolishly thought vampire being a template meant it could be used at low levels, an encounter potentially just as deadly as the vampire themselves. I'm just sort of wondering why this is even here, other than to inform the GM he can use bats or wolves as a plot device...which he could have done anyway.

Dominate. Show of hands, who figured out I was stalling until I got to this one? Yeah, that's just about everyone. It's obvious, this is some of the dumbest shit ever put on paper. Having infinite access to a spell isn't the end of the world...but it depends heavily on which spell you're given access to. Lemme explain something about dominate before we move on to vampire's problem.

I told you before that you need to use kid gloves when applying crowd control to the PCs because it removes agency and, in extreme cases, creates a situation where a player wants to get up from the table and do something else. Dominate is the worst one, the king of bad CCs. Not only does it remove you from combat, but it makes you act against your friends. Dominate swings fights heavily. Dominate removes agency. Dominate even causes arguments. Why? Because you get an additional save if the caster forces you to act against your nature, and this fact is woefully under-explained in the core book. How often do you get a resave? It doesn't say. What constitutes someone's nature? The book gives no guidelines. In Pathfinder, the writers of Ultimate Intrigue go into this ability at length...but let's face it, you're rolling the dice on if anyone in your group read that. Even if they did, I've known a lot of people who would readily roll their eyes and say the information is less valid because it's a supplement and not in the core book. More arguing.

Dominate sucks, and no permutation of it should ever be used by a GM in a pen and paper game. I'm sorry, but there are things the players are allowed to do that the GM isn't, just as there are a whole host of things the GM is allowed to do that the players aren't. One of those things a GM isn't allowed to do is take over someone else's character with a spell, removing their agency and making them watch while their character does things they don't want them to. Dominate lasts for DAYS, and it can easily take a character out of not just the fight, but the whole session.

Moving on to this power in specific, the vampire's problem isn't as simple as just a few castings of dominate person. First off, it's a supernatural ability. This is something most people would consider minutiae, but it's a huge advantage. It provokes no attack of opportunity and does not require somatic, verbal or material components. It can be used grappled and never needs a concentration check. It can't be interrupted or counterspelled. And...it will always have a save DC of 10 plus half hit dice plus a relevant ability score...in this case Charisma. This means, theoretically, that it's more balanced at lower levels, but also that it rises higher than a caster can ever go by casting the spell.

It also creates for some tactics that range from irritating to insane. In combat, it behooves the vampire to repeatedly try to dominate enemies or instruct vampire spawn to do the same, until half or more of the group is dominated. They will pick out any players with low will saves and make them do the "against their nature" dirty work of attacking each other. Succeeding the save doesn't make you immune, and that means they can spam you with this ability.

The vampire's abilities do seem intended to spam in combat, on top of all problems presented by dominate itself. Vampires being able to create spawn also guides GMs toward gang tactics such as using their horse-shit energy drain slam to lower saves while other vampires spam dominate. The core of a "trap monster" is a monster whose abilities inform basic tactics that turn out to be insanely tedious or frustrating to deal with...like these.

And before we move on, I want to make it clear that while a vampire is intended to be a monster you strongly prepare against, there can be issues with this. The first and most obvious is if the GM doesn't think preparation is important and just randomly springs vampires on the party. Obviously. The other is that you have to understand that there is a limit to what the party can prepare with. Keep in mind that a severely exploited deficiency, like a low will save, can't be raised by "preparation". Your justification for shitty, un-fun tactics can not be "Then you shouldn't have played that class". "Preparation" is different from your character's build. The two can not be combined well, and build-centric preparation usually exists inside of a character aiming toward a specific goal such as vampire hunter. This is not usually practiced by the average player, because...well...what does he do when he's not fighting vampires? The more you specialize inside your build, the more things you've wasted in every other circumstance. In 3.X and Pathfinder, this does extend somewhat to gold. Promote your players having a "group fund", be mindful of what they can buy or prepare with, and intended preparation will go smoother.

Protection from Evil trumps this ability to dominate, but even this presents several issues. First off, as Chris and I found out, it's secretly some of the poorest wording ever put to paper. Your group absolutely will either interpret it wrong or argue over what the entry means. Here's what it does as clarified by the devs: It gives you a single additional save at a +2. If you succeed, you're golden. However, if you fail, you are still dominated, but the vampire can not give you commands. This is a problem for several reasons. First off, the vampire can dispel Protection from Evil with impunity because dispel magic can't get rid of dominate. In fact, because it's not a spell, your only hope is Break Enchantment. Second, Protection from Evil lasts a number of minutes and Dominate Person lasts days. With the vampire's infinite, unbeatable escape methods it's not really hard to envision a vampire simply fleeing and returning later that night, this time probably skirting the "true nature" re-save by luring the dominated player away. And finally, the way saves are set up? There's a lot of characters out there who don't really benefit from one extra save at a +2. Low-save classes like fighter can be given a whole handful of saves and still not make it.

Do you see how dominate fucking sucks? That's not even an uncommon or mean thing to do with dominate but it still ends with one or more PCs being completely out of the game for hours, or more! I can't believe I still have to say this to people, but whenever a situation you created leads people to want to go do something else instead of PNP gaming, which you all showed up wanting to do...it sucks!

Ahem. In non-combat situations, this is even worse. The vampire can go around simply tapping people with dominate over and over until he succeeds and eventually have control over an entire town or more. This is less an issue because it's perfectly fine for a GM to use dominate like this as a plot contrivance for some sort of fight with the vampire's "minions", but taken the wrong way the GM can easily create a wholly unfair situation by accident. Even a basic plot point such as "This whole town is under the vampire's control" eliminates much of the skill-based character's impact on the plot, since the vampire will know everything that's going on as soon as his minions report back. The only saving grace here is that a dominated person is easy to spot. However, that only gets the PCs so far: like I said, the only thing that can remove it is Break Enchantment, and no party of any level has many of those to throw around.

Weaknesses. AND FINALLY, here's the bit where I explain that their weaknesses are not a mitigating factor to an open fight. Because they're not, they're positional weaknesses that will only come up before the combat. Garlic wards a room and prevents them from crossing it. A cross being beared against them allows a save and takes an action...so that one's kind of out. Basically, garlic(along with their insistence on being invited) means the party can create a safe space to rest. That's it. Our local game saw garlic used to restrict mobility, but a team with lesser stealth bonuses, or even different circumstances would be unable to leverage this bonus. Remember the vampire gets a +8 bonus to perception; range penalties to perception plus my character's bust-ass goblin stealth bonus may be the only reason this plan worked out. Additionally, because she was hiding in a sewer and not say, a building where there are more ways to escape via gaseous form.

And about that. Sunlight destroys them as well as immersion in running water. You'll find it shockingly easy to avoid these two things and the smallest amount of planning on the vampire's part completely removes them from the table. No vampire is going to let themselves get into combat anywhere near where either of these things is a danger. These are precautions so simple as to practically be plot holes if not addressed, things as simple as putting their coffin in an inside room or, better yet, the basement. Even if you can grapple him and drag him around(all the while taking con damage from those bites) you're not going to drag him through ten or fifteen rooms to the castle's only window. He's immune to nearly all of the game's crowd control thanks to being undead, so your options for actually getting him into sunlight or water are very low. Essentially, these are weaknesses that the GM has to allow you to exploit and, at that point, they're a plot contrivance at best.

Really, that's the most irritating part. In practice, the impact of its abilities is amplified and its weaknesses are mitigated. It punches far above its suggested CR adjustment of +2. Is there hope, though? Well, unlike our other trap monster candidates, absolutely. The difference lies in theming and acceptance. With a vampire, we can remove offending abilities without destroying the fantasy of the vampire: What would you think about a vampire who can't dominate people? Would your mind jump to that being strange or unreasonable? Probably not. Especially not if he were bestial, animalistic or appeared as a nosferatu. We can't do this with the phase spider or the illithid: their offensive abilities are iconic in the case of a nosferatu, and in the case of the phase spider...really, it's all they have. Remove it and you're just fighting giant spiders. You can also bump the vampire's CR a point or two to compensate. You can build up the fantasy of the vampire in other ways. Watch some Hammer films for inspiration.

Some monsters really are better as masters, and the Vampire definitely is one of them. Given a mind toward being fair but challenging to the players, and an emphasis on making the PCs plan out the encounter, and vampires can be memorable. Leave Dominate out, and mitigate its gasous form invincibility by being fairly challenging over being simply realistic. Like I keep saying...trust me when I say realism isn't even in your top twenty for things you need to worry about in a PNP game.

Zen Nonsense

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."


I fucking love monk. I haven't played THAT many of them, really, but it's hard to pick which of my favorite classes is my number one: Monk constantly fights with Rogue, so often that the last Monk I played was both of them. I like the gameplay and the statistics of them, but I love that special feel they have too. High flying acrobatics, clever secret tricks, and being equal parts infuriating and insightful in social interaction.

Everyone's seen martial arts movies, even if it's popular stuff like Kung Fu Panda or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We all know the stereotype: the preternaturally calm bald guy giving advice that you don't understand at first...or maybe ever. They speak in a particular kind of metaphor that seems common to them despite being in so many different movies. Fuck, even Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda do it a little. Even though Yoda is, at times, plainly discussing his philosophy, it has a certain sound to it.

Today I'm hoping to give some general advice on achieving that sound for your character. Your character doesn't have to follow Zen Buddhism to have that feel, but that is where it comes from. In super general terms, Zen is a philosophy wherein the individual experience is very important. It's not something that can simply be explained or defined. If you think that's bullshit, try to explain the taste of honey to someone as if they had never had it. You'll succeed to a point, but you'll hardly be able to explain the true experience of eating it. Zen has a strong emphasis on insight into your own true nature, so...well, that's where all that nonsense you hear powerful teachers in martial arts movies and animes comes from. Because it's impossible to directly explain, the next best thing is to evoke thought and cause a personal experience for someone else.

Put aside if you think Zen is bullshit or not, because it's evoking the feeling of Zen that's going to help us arrive at our character sounding like a wise old monk. With that in mind, I've got some advice in no particular order.


Define the order's core philosophy. This is the no-bullshit version you're coming up with, no need to fancy it up. We're doing that later. Discuss or write this down as if you're trying to explain it as plainly as possible to someone. You need a way this particular order or group looks at the world and some defining statements about how it works. This can easily inform the group's alignment like simple philosophies such as "The Weak only exist to justify the Strong" or "We are only as successful as our poorest brother" but plenty of them can be interpreted a great deal of different ways. Usually, this is what you want. You want a core philosophy that will evoke some sort of thought or discussion. Usually, that's how monasteries or monastic orders happen.

You can usually go pretty far or wild with this, but you don't have to. You can even be making a claim about the universe that's not verifiable, such as "There is a finite amount of pain in the world" or "The visual beauty of our surroundings enriches the soul and allows for amazing accomplishments". It's just an outlook that informs how the monks act and subsequently, how they talk to others.


Come up with some core metaphors. It's like we're making zen stew. We added the meat earlier, and this is all the vegetables and spices. We're acting like it devalues our message(the one from above) to directly explain it and coming up with metaphor and analogy to convey its real meaning. Think like your goal is to evoke thought, not explain yourself. Like it isn't something you're even able to explain and the person you're talking to needs to realize it for themselves. Come up with some building blocks and concepts/things to use instead of just saying what you mean. Thought association bubbles help out a lot here, where you can write down something like "flower" and list all the applicable descriptors of the item, then go from there.

Once you have a few of your philosophy's concepts tied to metaphors, it should be really easy to come up with common sayings, phrases or answers using those. Our previous example, the monks enamored with beauty, could relate everything to flowers: How some of them grow in spite of harsh circumstances, how cutting them causes their beauty to become finite, or how flowers create more flowers if tended properly. A good-aligned monk could claim real beauty is who you are inside, or an evil monk could say nothing that's inside you matters...it's all in how you're built. They'd both belong to the same monastery and follow the same lessons. They'd even use the same metaphors a lot.


Never say you don't know. This one seems minor but it's super important. You don't have to be constantly talking, but don't say "I don't know" or similar phrases. Prepare a comment, even if it doesn't seem like it's related or answers the question. This can be infuriating to some people, so you might need to watch it, but a comment parallel to a situation can signal that you don't know something without looking like you're a know-it-all. In fact, there's two different ways to do this. A "good" character is trying to evoke thought that will solve the encounter or question despite his lack of knowledge. An evil character is trying to look like he's got all the answers and is smarter or wiser than anyone else. A neutral character would probably be leaning toward the first method, but it would depend a lot on how his philosophy is structured. If you don't have anything useful to say, your character should be thinking the next best thing is to evoke thought in another person to get their mind 'flowing'. He wouldn't shrug and give up. It's important to note that he thinks this is helpful.


The logic of the statement is not the point. Let's analyze a common "Zen" statement that was probably never actually a part of Zen Buddhism. If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

Yes, btw. The answer is yes, based on previously observed patterns.

But we all know that's not the point of the statement. If you use that answer on someone, they'd say you didn't understand, and they're right. Kind of. The statement is intended to make you think, to get your mind flowing. The fact that it(along with other common 'zen' statements) has an answer is entirely beside the point. Your monk should be keeping that in mind. He doesn't need to be illogical, and in fact could guide someone toward 'Zen' thinking by explaining this exact thing to them. Of course, if he's evil, he might just gloat at someone else's small mind. In general, though, meaning, metaphor and significance are going to be more important than bare logic.


So I hope this helped. This sort of feeling and tone is a little hard for me to explain and I hope that hit the mark. Not every monk needs to do this, and in fact a "pure logic" monk who studies facts and techniques instead of philosophies can be fun too. In fact, applying this feel and habit to a different class can be really memorable. It doesn't even need to be a wisdom class, since Zen is more a way of thinking than anything else.

As a parting thought, if any Zen Buddhists are reading this and cringing at my terrible explanations...sorry! This was born more from martial arts movies than real world philosophy.

Trap Monsters: The Phase Spider

So nobody who plays my monthly Pathfinder game is surprised we're talking about trap monsters again, but I imagine everyone assumed this week would be about vampires. We did have a vampire encounter, though it went well and was decently satisfying. That's not to say I'm not going to talk about vampires: No, vampires in D20 are complete horse shit and I will get around to moaning about them too.

But no, you see. Something Happened.

We were attacked by phase spiders in what was supposed to be an easy encounter. The GM was calling back to earlier in the game, where we avoided an ambush. We were tracking someone through dense forest and they had made a fake trail. We decided Barkus, our dwarven warpriest would follow one path while Occam and Icke, stealth bros 4 lyfe, followed the other. Icke and Occam happened upon a grisly scene with a crying child and their parent killed by an axe. Icke immediately suspected it was some sort of trap, and Occam straight-up didn't care. We had better shit to do. So, we yelled out "Life's tough, kid, buy a helmet" and cut through the forest to meet back with Barkus on the true trail. That was a phase spider weaving illusions through its web to cause an ambush. Several days later and after our encounter with a vampire, we ran across another one, though this time we fell for it. Now, it's probably DIFFERENT phase spiders, but they're intelligent, so I choose to believe they were so fucking mad that they didn't fool us that they went through all this trouble to try again.

I didn't need to tell you that, I just think it's really funny. Anyway, it illustrates an important point: The GM created a decent, satisfying encounter and the fun of it was hamstrung only by the statistics and abilities of the monster.

Our GM was using a variant of the phase spider that had illusions(as above), an Accelerate Poison ability, and claws instead of improved grab. That's all fine, none of that is an issue we need to discuss here. I couldn't find that variant, but even if he had made it up himself, variants are a fun way to shake things up. Imagine if they didn't have those illusion abilities to create a trap: they would've just jumped out of the ethereal on us, randomly. That's boring. Anyway, having three natural attacks instead of one at least creates some sort of incentive for the thing to stay on the material plane. We'll see why that's a good thing later on.

Anyway. When I talked about Mind Flayers, I went through an overview of what makes a trap monster and why it's bad. In addition to abilities that are simply unfair or cause an unsatisfying combat experience, you also need to watch out for monsters whose suggested tactics or abilities cause players(or the monster) to act strangely. This will often lead to an unsatisfying combat experience, which is what we're worried about in the first place. It's a red flag.

The phase spider is CR5. It has a CON poison, a bite for decent damage, improved grab, and the reach of a size large enemy. It has the ability to ambush with a full attack action, as well as its Ethereal Jaunt ability. Feel free to search phase spiders on D20PFSRD.com for full stats. Its ethereal jaunt is special: It works like the spell of the same name, but it can enter the material plane from the ethereal as a free action and leave the material plane for the ethereal as a move action, or even as part of a move action.

Do you see the problem yet?

The phase spider can phase in, attack, then phase out, leaving itself completely invulnerable on other people's turns. It's a CR 5 monster, and no party actually challenged by it will have a direct answer to ethereal jaunt like dimension lock. Even a party twice its level(IE mine) will. This leaves you reliant on Readied Actions to do anything at all, an option that sees little use in most games or encounters. Hell, if your group doesn't understand or even know about readied actions, this is a TPK. Delaying your action doesn't work because it's not a way to act in the middle of someone's action. Readied actions aren't very common, so don't come at me insisting most groups know about them. Even in the groups I'm in, they come up very rarely and we often have people confused about how they work.

So that's the first problem. Everyone is reduced to single actions, nobody can take a full attack, and we throw the entire concept of initiative out of the window. After literally everyone in the group is readying their action, the initiative count is going to look like this.

20:
19: Phase Spider 1, Phase Spider 2, Occam, Icke, Kamuati, Mina, Robyn, Barkus, Eniere, Captain Ladybones, Dr. Gatter, Samual, and the 1976 Denver Broncos.
18:
17:
16:
15:

(Fun fact: all 34 members of the Denver Broncos play paladins. It's a VERY low conflict group.)

Does that look confusing and stupid? Yes it does. Good job. Is it fun? I mean, I sure didn't think so. Some people don't mind essentially doing the same thing every combat action. Some people love it and build characters with that in mind. However, even those people don't like being forced into a single tactic. It's the fact that only one thing is going to work that upsets them, the very restriction of it.

Force spells and abjurations do work despite being ethereal. However, at level five this means magic missile. First off, you'd need see invisibility up to target it, because the spell requires less than total concealment.  You get three 1d4+1 missiles at level five, for an average of 9 damage. With the phase spider's 51 hit points, you'd need to cast the spell, on average, six times. A level 5 sorcerer has exactly six 1st level spells per day. He'll have say two more due to high CHA. Will he have See Invisibility? He's only chosen one 2nd level spell at this point, so unless it's provided by his bloodline, it's not likely.
Could the sorcerer kill the thing? Maybe. Will the sorcerer kill the thing in the six-seven rounds it'll take after the phase spider identifies the sorcerer as his only real threat? It does has an INT of 7. Well, the phase spider deals 2d6+7 damage and the sorcerer is gonna have about 30 HP if he's got a CON of 14. You tell me. Oh, and the wizard is just boned because there's no way he has enough magic missiles even if he knows he's fighting a phase spider. In fact, in this day and age I'm kinda being generous even assuming you've got an arcane spellcaster. The days of the Balanced Party are pretty well over, especially in Pathfinder with its absurd amount of base classes.

You can't even move to get away from it, because it can phase into the real world as a move action, or as part of a move action. It doesn't even take him any amount of feet of movement. You can double move past its speed of 40ft and deny it an attack by forcing it to double move as well...but it's not like it HAS to phase in. It can just move and then sit there waiting for your action while it's invulnerable. If you've been poisoned, this is even to its benefit. If you haven't? Well, cue up Yackety Sax and play it at full volume, because this can continue ad infinitum.

This gets into an infuriating meta-game if the GM doesn't identify that there is a problem with the monster's design. You'll start making endurance checks while walking in circles because neither you nor the monster is willing to give up and just get hit. You may have to field questions like "Well how long are you going to ready your action? Nothing happens for several minutes." with the monster waiting until you give up to get a "free" hit on you. Is that fun? You tell me.

The final problem is minor, but tangible. It's minor because the GM can fix it, but it requires illogical tactics. The monster acting illogically is fine to a point, but it's not really a fix. We'll talk more on that when vampire comes up. With his ethereal jaunt and low CR, the phase spider has a permanent, unbeatable escape. This is, in general, another red flag I failed to go over when discussing the trap monster overview. It can be mitigated by the GM simply not using it, but often when we use trap monsters it's because we haven't identified them as a trap.

Here's why that's such a problem. Even if you get proper XP from the fight, a villain getting away is frustrating. You should only do it sparingly, and only when you need a villain to come back and can't justify another method. Like, there's no reason a random encounter monster needs to escape unless you're trying to save the PCs from a situation too hard for them. This is a reason why I recommend you use villains in a non-combat capacity for face time. Talking via spells like magic mouth or programmed illusions, things like contingency or terrain the players can't traverse. Being in a combat and the antagonist getting away is frustrating. Despite what Bennett Foddy says, people do NOT find frustration fun. They'll hate your villain, true, but too much and it'll become hatred for the wrong reasons. If the players feel their agency is being taken away, they'll start to hate the villain because they're not being allowed to "get" them.

This isn't so bad when we're just talking about a standard encounter, but they'll still get angry that it got away. It's "pointless" if the PCs are still given proper experience for the encounter, and wildly unfair if they haven't been. Their frustration will compound if this happens too much. What's worse, is that if the GM doesn't identify the problem and acts "logically" then the monster may hold a grudge and come back...but he still has that unbeatable escape, so the party may end up in an extremely frustrating experience of being constantly ambushed by the same monster and never being able to defeat them.

So yeah, honestly I'm glad this came up while it was an "easy" encounter for my group so nobody had to die to prove how dumb this monster is. And I'm pretty sad at this one too, because Dale's descriptions of the monster and how it ripped through its web-illusions to attack were great. The monster's cool. Just, y'know, basically unusable.

A final note for anyone who doesn't believe me about its tactics. I urge you to go read the suggested tactics under its entry, because just like with the Illithid, I've followed them exactly. The book even says they'll poison people then just fucking sit there on the ethereal plane and wait for the poison to cause con damage. Fun! Fun encounter.

I don't know who designed the phase spider, but I did want to say something. An open letter. Sir or Madam, you're an asshole. There is no way you truly and honestly think this monster is fair or fun. I refuse to believe you are that stupid. If you're still designing monsters today, leave your First Edition D&D Jerkass Bullshit out of it. It's not welcome in Pathfinder.

How Useful is your Skill: Tier list

"We haven't much time, 'friends'! You're going to help me test out my latest and greatest creation.

Now. Before you change your minds."


I fucking hate tier lists. Like BMI, it's a basic collection of information that people go fucking overboard with. In a fighting game, theorists will gauge which characters have an advantage over other characters, and the ones with the most advantages will be put higher in the tier list. It's simple, and it's not always saying there's a huge difference between two characters. For example, King Dedede is a bottom tier character in Smash 4, but that doesn't mean you can pick Diddy Kong(who's top tier) and just automatically win. It doesn't mean you're "stupid" for picking Dedede. The list creators aren't even saying that themselves.

But that's how they're taken, all of the time. To use Smash as our example again, there are people who will look at the S tier and refuse to play anyone but Bayonetta, Cloud, Shiek and Diddy. It's stupid, especially if you're doing this in casual play and you're never going to touch a real tournament. I mean, you're surrounded by your friends who are all picking their favorite characters and you're "eyes on the prize" focused on winning.

I said all that so you'd have context for what I'm doing. I'm going to talk about Pathfinder's core skill set and how valuable the skills are. It doesn't mean you're stupid for taking a low tier skill, and like I always say, every class can spare a few skill points to support a cool backstory. I'm simply discussing trends I've noticed along with basic theorycrafting, to give people an idea of how to prioritize skills. A few ground rules first.


I'm only discussing the core Pathfinder skills. I haven't read the PF update to the Psionics guide so we won't be going over autohypnosis or any of the other skills it updates.

I'm factoring in skill unlocks as well as new uses for skills, such as in the Occult Guide. They're not going to sway my opinion very often, though.

Obviously, things shuffle around based on the kind of game you're playing in. I go into that in the lists, but in general you're going to have to "read the room" or pay attention to what your GM is telling you about the game. Obviously Swim is more important in an aquatic game, and the social skills are flat out necessary in a socially focused game. This kind of thing is always going to happen, and I'm just trying to provide general information and guidance.

I'm not factoring in what class you're playing. Yeah, this is going to change what skills you take, but it's so obvious that I don't feel the need to discuss it. So when Perform is low on our tier list, don't come at me with "But Bard!". I know. I know Bard.

I didn't take optional rules into account, even though Expanded Craft and Expanded Profession are how those skills should have been designed in the first fucking place.

So with that out of the way, here we go.


Hyper Rainbow Tier
Skills in this tier are always useful, no matter what the game is or who's running it. It will probably still come up even if the GM is making an effort to squash it. It's something everyone can justify putting points into regardless of class or concept.

Perception - Yeah, there's only one skill here. It will be a very strange game if your GM isn't calling for a perception check several times in the night. Knowing what's going on and getting key information and hints from the GM is super important to figuring out mysteries, or even just who's about to attack you. In addition to just passively knowing what's going on, it counters stealth and finds traps. Perception will almost always be your most-rolled skill.


Gold Tier
Skills in this tier are useful very often and in most games. They will almost always come up, and hardly ever need players putting in an effort to make them useful.

Diplomacy - Diplomacy covers getting people to help you, which you're either going to end up doing a lot, either by necessity or by it simply being easier than the alternative. It also covers gathering information, which you absolutely will end up doing. This is the prime social interaction skill.

Knowledge(Arcana) - Arcana covers Constructs, Magical Beasts, and Dragons, which you'll fight reasonably often. It also covers magical traditions and symbols, which are bound to come up. Most importantly, however... it covers Weird Magical Shit. Weird Magical Shit will come up in every game you play. Hands down. Even the "low magic" games. Especially those games. As a small bonus, the psychic skill unlock for this is Phrenology, which lets you get some "speak with dead" style information about a corpse(or sleeping person) without having to cast anything. Nice considering that most people who will be using that unlock won't have that spell on their spell list.

Stealth - A lot of skills are dedicated to gathering information, and Stealth is no different. Even if you never steal anything(which, let's face it, is almost always the easy way) it also covers things like scouting and reconnaissance. It also facilitates killing by coup de gras or simple ambush, which can pretty often make an upcoming combat easier. This is technically a skill that requires the player to be proactive about it's use, but it's useful so often and in so many different games that I've made an exception.

Spellcraft - Spellcraft is how you identify magic items and spells as they're being cast. I could stop explaining why this is a great skill right there. Your group will be rolling this constantly for their loot, OR end up paying someone to do it. That aside, knowing what spells are being cast is very important, and people are going to be casting spells in your presence constantly.  Even if you're not a spellcaster, you still might be able to justify ranks in Spellcraft.

Use Magic Device - This skill almost got into Hyper Rainbow Tier, but I'm assuming your game is sticking to its book listed uses and not letting players fudge what it can do. Being able to emulate another type of character so you can use a magic item is great. Being able to activate things without knowing their command words is even better. Both of these combined means you can get past standing magical structures like magic doors or portals with a skill check and not having to somehow research or identify how it works.


Silver Tier
Skills in this tier are still pretty useful, but may require some effort on the player to fully realize their worth. They may only come up in certain situations or require the player to be proactive or inventive about their application.

Acrobatics - I fucking love acrobatics, but the fact is that a lot of its uses can be mitigated in some way. Being able to jump doesn't matter as much when you've got wings of flight or a fly spell, and plenty of classes get big bonuses to jumping which preclude you taking acrobatics if you're not one of them. However, it's still really useful for moving around, and it is the ONLY way to avoid Attacks of Opportunity on the battlefield. You may not always need to do that, but it's VERY nice to be able when you do.

Bluff - So yeah, this is only in Silver Tier because, generally, you have to choose to lie to people. Bluff will sometimes get you into an amount of trouble that Diplomacy never will. However, in the hands of the right character, bluff is fucking great and will be very useful in the hands of someone aiming to make it so. Feint is just icing.

Disable Device - There's traps and locks. We all know that. getting past them is a fucking STAPLE of the genre, so instead of going on and on about that, let me share the ONLY reason this isn't in Gold Tier. It very nearly was, but IDENTIFYING that a trap is there is the most important part. Getting past a trap or lock can be accomplished by Disable Device...or, a lot of the time, by hitting it very hard. It's a sad fact, but breaking things works a lot of the time. Still, Disable Device is intensely useful. There will be traps you can't break. There will be chests you won't want to RISK breaking. There will be locks you CAN'T break without making noise. Disable Device is the more elegant and careful solution.

Handle Animal - This is a disused skill I feel like shouldn't be. Training animals for some sort of use can be really helpful. They don't need high skill ranks to roll to assist you in something, and they don't need a high amount of HD. There's a ton of different useful tricks, and even if you only stick to the core book, guard animals will, at the very least, wake you up or alert you to danger. You can also train flanking buddies, or assist pals. Yeah, they only have a few HD. Sure, they might not always succeed at that DC 10, but it's a solid bonus that's not very expensive to replace.

Intimidate - Intimidate can cause Shaken in combat and has some pretty useful feat applications like the Boar Style tree or Dazzling Display. Without that, it can even get you something socially, but it's temporary and not likely to win you any friends. Carefully applied and with a feat or two, though, and this is one of the best debuffs in the game.

Knowledge(Local) - Another useful skill I feel is disused. This time, I know it's because it used to be tied to particular areas, forcing you to spend skill points for a very minor, fiddly amount of knowledge. Now that it's not, this skill is great for making your way, fitting in without looking like an outsider, or simply navigating an area or city. Most PCs are constantly traveling and this skill gets you everything you need to know about where you are.

Knowledge(Nature) - Per the book, knowledge of animals, fey, monstrous humanoids, plants, seasons and cycles, weather, and vermin. All things you're likely to be fighting a lot in your game. Wilderness is often a staple of the fantasy genre. This is no substitute for survival, but it can still prove pretty valuable when you're in the middle of nowhere. Like I just said, the players will likely be in the middle of nowhere a lot.

Knowledge(Planes) - Knowing things about the planes themselves is useful, but knowing things about outsiders is better. The mid to high CR monster lists are dominated by outsiders and undead.

Knowledge(Religion) - In addition to knowledge about undead, which are often a staple enemy, this is everything you need to know about gods and religious traditions, both things that are very likely to come up.

Linguistics - Let's face it, you're going to be traipsing through ruins looking at ancient scrolls and warnings scrawled onto the walls. If you're not doing that, by some miracle, you're still encountering a billion different races and a billion different languages. The psychic skill unlock, Automatic Writing, is also a semi-reliable casting of Augury or Divination, which can be a help, especially at later levels.

Sense Motive - Another skill that was almost gold. People are GOING to lie to you, but even if they don't, this skill lets you read situations, give hunches, or gauge someone's general trustworthiness. This skill is great for when you've got a hunch about a situation already and you'd like to confirm it with a roll.

Sleight of Hand - A somewhat good money maker and a skill that can potentially make your life a lot easier by lifting keys or important macguffins off people without having to kill them. In stealthy or subtle situations this skill can see a lot of use, but it's one of the skills that requires your inventive application.

Survival - Wilderness is a staple of the fantasy genre, and most games are going to be in it a lot. It's nice to be able to hand-wave things like path finding or gathering food by having decent ranks in this skill.


Bronze Tier
Skills in this tier probably won't come up even if the player puts effort into making them useful. They may simply be concepts unlikely to come up in an average game, or there is something in the game that makes putting ranks into them less useful, such as spells or magic items.

Appraise - It's nice to know what your treasure is worth, and a decent GM will always throw you a curveball or two like rare gems or works of art. However, this skill is really only for maximizing your profits, which not everyone is going to care about. Thiefy types can use Skill Unlocks to get some decent uses out of this, but with so many decent unlocks to take and so few you actually get, it feels like a waste.

Climb - Being able to climb is great, and it's probably going to come up, but here's the problem. Things like slippers of spider climb, wings of flying, or racial climb scores preclude you ever having to roll this skill. It's rare that you'll want to put more than 5 ranks in this.

Craft - The mechanics of the craft system as presented in the core book are straight up broken. The times it gives to make things make no sense at all. You'd never use this for actually making mundane items unless you're literally naked in the wilderness and using the new forage system... which is pretty cool, to be fair. A GM using expanded crafting skill from Pathfinder Unchained could potentially bump this a lot closer to silver, but as it is, it's just not going to come up much. This skill is propped up by saving you money on gunpowder and alchemical materials, but also the new Trophy system, which lets you get some extra money out of monsters.

Disguise - Disguise can be pretty useful for gathering information, hiding your identity and such, but Hat of Disguise and polymorph subschool spells give a pretty big bonus to this skill. You can see some nice use out of ranks sometimes, but at some point given a greater hat of disguise and a few ranks and nobody's going to beat your number ANYWAY.

Escape Artist - It can get you out of a grapple. That's nice. It can get you through tight spaces. That, however, isn't as useful as it seems. You can sometimes break your way into something, or even use reduce person or other polymorph spells to preclude having to put much into this skill.

Knowledge(Dungeoneering) - Abberations, Oozes, Caverns and Spelunking. So, two seldom-used monster types and two concepts I can't think of how to roll for. I mean, you're going to be in caves and underground a lot, but I can't think of why you'd need to roll this.

Knowledge(Geography) - Lands, Terrain, Climates and People. Most of this skill's usefulness can also be provided by Knowledge(Local). The reason you'd take this is for knowledge of places you can't find maps for. That might come up once or twice, but probably not often.

Knowledge(History) - I really want this skill to be useful, but frankly it's REALLY nice in specialized games and...otherwise, probably won't come up. The average game is only going to have maybe five places where you can even roll this and come up with something useful.

Perform - If you're not a bard, all Perform does is earn you a decent amount of money for your time. It can be helpful for improving someone's mood or for providing a cover story for your identity, but those are kind of at the GM's discretion.

Ride - This is only for riding in combat and stressful situations, which holds it back. Everyone's gonna ride horses, but riding one in combat can be nice bonuses. If nothing else, you can usually get that nice little +1 for advantageous position. This is in bronze simply because...well, you're either a Mounted Combat guy or you're not. I can't see a lot of people just putting ranks in ride and not backing it up with feats or lances or special mounts.

Swim - Oh boy, this one. Swim is useless until it's not. Nobody wants to fucking drown, but there's two problems. One is a lot of characters are going to be wearing so much weight in gear and armor that no amount of ranks is gonna save them from sinking straight the fuck down. The other is that Water Breathing basically precludes this skill. Add in that most games aren't going to strongly feature water or boats.


Kevin Costner in Waterworld Tier
Skills in this category never come up. There are few, if any, ways to make them useful, no matter how hard you try. If you're rolling these skills a lot, you're either in a very specialized game, or your GM is messing with you. Maybe both.

Fly - I guess Paizo felt this skill had to exist to curb people flying in combat. Fair, I guess...but the DC for falling when getting hit is only ever DC10, it never goes up. You roll it for fancy maneuvers, which most flying combatants aren't going to bother with. If you plan on flying in combat a lot, you took Hover. Like, period. Even then, most of flight's benefits are out of combat anyway. Pathfinder really overvalues flight.

Heal - I did a whole post on this. Just so I'm not repeating myself, I'll be brief. Heal doesn't do anything that curative magic doesn't do, and even with the heal skill unlock, it's not very useful even if you don't have a cleric.

Knowledge(Engineering) - Nobody's ever actually rolled this skill in my presence and had it make a difference. It only ever comes up in terms of being able to effectively destroy a building. There are so many destructive spells like earthquake or even fucking fireball that I don't see the point. As for its other uses? ... Are there any? The book says it handles bridges, aqueducts, buildings and fortifications. Have you ever had to roll a knowledge skill about an aqueduct? Seriously think to yourself, have you ever even been in a game that had an aqueduct in it?

Knowledge(Nobility) - You can't even justify this skill in a social game, because everything you'd ever use it for would be covered by Knowledge(Local). I can't even imagine most actual nobles have this skill. They gather information on relevant allies or enemies and ignore the ones that aren't. This is another one I haven't seen anyone roll in my presence and have it make a difference in the game.

Profession - Profession doesn't actually do anything. Go read the book if you don't believe me. All it does is make a piddly amount of money. There's no reason to ever take this skill unless your GM is using the expanded profession, alternate profession or downtime rules from Pathfinder Unchained. If you are, Profession bumps solidly into bronze, maybe even silver...but in all other games, it remains here underneath the waves.