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I blame Cosmo for my being late to work, because I found this thread...
Is there any way to group downloads together so that I can download them all at once? I've got all the files from the the PDF Superpack in My Downloads now, and I'd really like to not have to click each one, wait for the page to refresh, wait for the download to start, and then move on to the next. I understand that Paizo needs to watermark each file, so external mass-downloaders (such as FlashGot) can't handle the links directly, but some functionality to either download the entire Superpack as one file via the pledge screen, or to check which files in My Downloads I'd like to get and have a "Download all selected" button, would be greatly appreciated.
I don't plan on using a Deck of Many things in my games, ever, but I'm strongly considering a Harrow Deck of Many Things. But the PCs wouldn't get it. Instead, first the deck will appear from nowhere. Then a group of people in the midst of the process of destroying it will. Someone will hit it, it'll disappear, and then one of the others will cast a divination spell and a teleport spell, and they all vanish. Knowledge (arcana) check to figure out what just happened.
I too agree with pretty much everyone else. "Cocktail" is a weird name for a monster. I also found myself wondering what happens to people who try to eat the ooze or the bits it throws... After all, if one way to sate the addiction is to eat the ooze then there should be some downside to that. Definitely getting my vote!
This is a permanent transmutation effect This is a situation where words mean different things in different contexts, and the context here isn't clear. A "Permanent" spell is one that stays in effect until dispelled. An "Instantaneous" spell is one that has a permanent effect but can't be dispelled because the magic itself is gone. Since this is a supernatural ability, it's not clear whether you were referring to the spell duration of "permanent" or the general meaning of the word. If the former, you should explicitly state the DC to dispel the spell (since it's based on caster level, which supernatural abilities don't normally have). If the latter, then don't call it a "transmutation effect", which is a spell term - just say that the victim "is permanently turned into a tree" instead.
The official rule is: To determine a creature’s hit points, roll the dice indicated by its Hit Dice. A creature gains maximum hit points if its first Hit Die roll is for a character class level. Creatures whose first Hit Die comes from an NPC class or from his race roll their first Hit Die normally. But he is the GM and can do whatever he wants. That being said, ask him what happens if a character with less than 10 Con rolls a 1? Normally, the lowest Con you can start with is 5 (-2 racial, on a 7 base). That's a -3, and the lowest hit die size is 6. So the minimum HP you can start a new character with is 3. With his system, it's possible to start a character with a maximum hp of -2. So what happens then? Do you reroll HP until you get a positive score? Do you make a new character? What if the new character is exactly identical to the one who just died in chargen except for a different name and a different HP roll?
I'd guesstimate that Ajaxis is more "glass is half empty" inclined rather than rooting against his fellow Goblin Squad Members. :) Better hope it's the top half of the glass that's empty. If its the bottom half... Hey, free glass!
Definitely an advantage to running it after all the books have come out!
So, I have no idea what I'm doing yet (I'd love to do a 20th level monk, but I question the effectiveness), but here's some questions for you to rule on: 1) Craft Construct. I can't take Leadership and have an army of followers, but can I take Craft Construct and have an army of golems, if I pay for them out of my wealth? 2) Does d20pfsrd.com count as a reliable source if provided with links to Paizo-sourced content on there? 3) How are you handling wishes - are we limited to the listed effects (which are already pretty useful, but are supported by the rules) or can we wish for anything we want? 4) Do a monk's unarmed strikes count as "All melee weapons you are carrying" for the Lead Blades spell? If so, would this stack with enlarge person? Strong Jaw? 5) Do you have any objection to a character from a class which grants the Timeless Body ability (such as a druid) saying that they reached that level before taking any age penalties, but have since advanced to Venerable? Or must aging be done evenly?
As it reads, this implies that it only happens when the PCs are actually in the First World. And while the benefits of it happening are definitly helpful to the PCs, I am questioning whether it has a chance to happen as they defeat blooms. I know the gaurdians listed do not actually show up in the blooms, but they have some control over them. This control reaches across the planes enough to make the bloom appear, so by destroying the bloom I would think that this would impact the chance that 1000Breath transfers, since it impacted the controling entity. I would highly recommend against it, for several reasons. First of all, there's nothing that specifically links the guardians to the blooms - they're linked to the glades, not the creatures that have to be defeated. For example, in area B, it's linked to the lightning treants, but the linked bloom involves the water elementals. In area J, it's the statues which are involved in the bloom, not the dragon. And so on. Secondly, uprooting Thousandbreaths is supposed to be a big deal that makes the PCs feel like they accomplished something major. If it happens "off screen", when they aren't in the First World, then that's taken away from them. This is especially so if they hadn't even made it into the forest yet, so they don't know how things changed. Finally, as a simple manner of mechanics, the more you roll, the more likely it is to happen. Even if it was just 1% chance every time you rolled, if you double the number of rolls, you double the chances of it occurring. And since it can't be undone (within the timeframe of the campaign), it's a pretty big bonus to give to the PCs for less effort than usual.
I do a huge amount of data parsing in my day job. One of our apps pulls data from XML, tab-delimited flat files, web service calls (which use XML behind the scenes but never expose it), JSON, and SQL queries against a remote database, and parses it all into a form we can use and store in our database. All of these formats convey the same basic data structure. None of them follow any standard (other than being correctly-formatted for their type), although they are usually well documented. I have wished they would all agree on something, but it's never going to happen. On the other hand, if you know you're going to be dealign with this as a consumer of the data, it's relatively easy to write something where the central part says "I need this data" and depending on which source you're communicating with, a specific separate part says "Ah, I speak that language, here's your data." . Generating data in lots of formats is harder, but you can use the same model. The central part says "Here, add this data to what you're sending" and the appropriate part translates it on its way out. On the other hand, this is my day job, or at least a part of it. Like Rob said, it takes time and resources away from the other things I could be doing. Setting up the central processors and our first two sources took a lot of initial setup time, although it's been amply repaid by the time we've saved as we've expanding the sources we communicate with from the original 2 to the current 9 or 10. But if I was only ever going to be talking to one or two sources, the time wouldn't have been worth it. I said it was relatively easy, and it is - I probably spent 50% longer on the initial two sources to create the central processor along with them - but it's still a time investment which might not pay off. Unrelated to that, I used to be active on the dumpshock forums, and at one point I created an entire XSD for inter-program communication of Shadowrun characters. The intent was to let you take your character from either the main Shadowrun chargen spreadsheet or any of the smaller GUI-based builders, and plug it into a program which would print nicely formatted character sheets. Unfortunately, there was no real buy-in from the maker of the main Shadowrun chargen spreadsheet, and I didn't have the skills to code the "pretty-printer" app. So it faded into obscurity (as far as I know), and is probably long lost. ------------- What's the point to all this? Basically, it's twofold, to go with the two-part story. First, to say that adding support for an existing specified standard would not require the same amount of overhead that Rob was discussing, but would still require some developer time and energy that could be spent on other things. This means that by offloading the creation of a standard to the forums, or a volunteer working group pulled from them, or anyone other than the ones who would use it, people like Gary and Rob won't need to pull nearly as much time away from other features. They'll still need to take the time to implement support for it, but in theory it would be relatively easy to add into an existing app. (Read standard -> Create in-memory character -> Save character into storage; Load character -> Export character -> Write standard). Second, to point out that a standard developed by people other than the ones who would use it it won't ever get used, unless those people start using it. And they are going to need a reason to invest the time and energy into starting to use it. I'd love to see an interop standard. I'd love to have a hand in creating it. But even if someone posted one that could handle everything that could possible be thrown at it, and was still somehow easy to use, it's unlikely to be adopted unless either two major established players in the market or one major player and one newcomer who has a gap in the first product they can fill decide to support it. The first major player can put pressure on others to be the second, but you need interest from at least someone established or there's no point. Sell the idea of a community-built standard to someone who already has a product people use, then construct it. Otherwise, it won't happen.
Does anyone know if on any of these forums anyone came up with a system that is similar to the battle system as presented by Paizo but just added a battlefield movement system? I just posted my heavily revised rules here. On a high level, they're similar to the official system with tactical movement, but you can drill down a lot deeper, since it's much less abstract. It might be too late to be relevant for you, though, since it's been 10 months since you asked.
I've never really liked the mass combat rules as they were released in Kingmaker. The River Nations book helped, but it was still built on what I considered to be a flawed concept, and introduced a new set of flaws as well. I'm not going to bash on specifics here, but my primary complaint is that it's too abstract. Two armies of the same CR are going to be almost the same mechanically, and in-battle tactics consist of matching your opponents changes to their strategy track. It feels like the equivalent of opening the Bestiary to the Average Stats By CR table and saying "There's a monster in front of you. It swings at you and hits. Do you want to swing at it?" Instead of this, I set about looking for alternatives.  Building upon a set of rules created by sirmattdusty and the excellent concepts in Warpath, I assembled a set of Revised Mass Combat Rules. It features combat which is much closer to the tactical combat of a standard Pathfinder game, armies that are as different as any two characters, and the Kingdom-based tie-ins to actually make what you build matter for what you can recruit. I certainly won't claim that these rules are perfect. In fact, I haven't even playtested them yet. This might end up being a total mess of overcomplexity and fail.  By posting the rules here, I'm hoping that some of you will take a look, try it out, and give me feedback.  Do the rules make sense? Are there gaping holes? Is it possible to game the system to extremes? Are they fun? Please let me know what you think!
This thread inspired me to consider making yet another offline PRD reference app. I do application development for my day job (including data storage, web scraping and full-text search), so my skills are in the right line for doing this, but I don't have any iOS experience yet. My preliminary plans include:
Longer term plans include a feat-finder / mini-character sheet, where you can enter some basic information about your character (probably race, stats, BAB and current feats) and automatically get a list of all feats you qualify for. I'm also considering implementing a global preference to turn certain books on or off, and if they're off they will never show up in lists, and show up at the end of search results in a greyed out color. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be parsing the official PRD or d20pfsrd.com for my data (if the latter is even allowable). The former is more official, but the latter is much better linked and organized. I might make it a choice within the app, with one (your choice) being free and the second as an in-app purchase (and the ability to switch back and forth once you've bought the second). Given all that, is this actually something that's needed? Would people be interested in something like this? Any suggestions? Other features missing from the current options?
One of my players just took a Blink Dog as his cohort with Leadership. We then realised that with an at-will quickened dimension door (at CL 7), the blink dog could travel 680 feet as a swift action each round. Turning that from feet/round into MPH gives a speed of 77.2 MPH. This doesn't factor in the double move (+80'/round -> 86 MPH) or run (+160'/round -> 95.5 MPH) the blink dog can make between blinks. I'm pretty certain this makes blink dogs the fastest creatures on Golarion, hands down. And because it's a spell-like ability, they can do it all day without getting tired. Obviously, it's not as fast as communication via magic, but it certainly can do a lot for ordinary communications. As a Mdium creature with a strength of 12, a blink dog can carry 43 pounds of stuff in saddlebags. That's a lot of paper notes or small valuables. Plus, blink dogs are generally LG, so you can trust them with your stuff, and they're never in one spot more than 6 seconds (1 round), so they're really hard to ambush and waylay. All this leads to the question: Why isn't Golarion's (or any other setting's) equivalent to the Pony Express to hire a whole bunch of blink dogs to carry the mail?
There's many more events in Dale's BotRN linked above, but they still follow the same general outline of "Here's what's going on, deal with it as a miniadventure, or roll a kingdom stat to make it go away". Some of them do specifically mention various kindom roles, but there's little actual involvement. Even if there was, the problem with an event table is repetition and scale. There's only so many times that dealing with bandits moving in is fun. Eventually, the players are just going to say "Again?" and wonder why the leaders of the kingdom are getting involved with every minor thing that's going on instead of hiring people to deal with it. Of course, that also leads into the question of why the leaders of the kingdom are wandering around the rest of the Stolen Lands rather than sending explorers of their own. Better than having events which specifically correspond to each position, you should look into having some specific subsystem for each position. For instance, I currently have a treaty system (partially stolen from this thread and modified by sirmattdusty referenced here) for the Grand Diplomat, expanded rules for a military council (like the US Joint Chiefs of Staff) for the General (also from matt), a wilderness patrol system for the Warden (which originally was from matt, but is being significiantly revised), and espionage for the Spymaster. That's only four positions covered so far, but you can theoretcially devise similar expansions for each one. Additionally, you could move all city building onto the Ruler, Councilor or Treasurer as their subsystem, or move all actual die rolling (and possibly modifer tracking) onto the Ruler. The flip side to expanding roles like that is the increased amount of time required to adjudicate it. Ideally, everyone's role will either be a single choice ("I make this selection from my options and it happens") or reduced to a single die roll each month ("I want to do this, and so I roll, get a result, and move on.") This is the same idea as "character creation is complicated, combat resolution is simple" which underlies a lot of combat in Pathfinder (you can spend a lot of time picking the right feats and calculating your modifiers, but it all comes down to a d20+modifiers-penalties).
Still it is a shame that there will be no cleric risking to miscast a scroll ever, ideally I'd change it but would not consider it worth houseruling.. if I did it would likely add the spell level of the scroll to the DC of the wisdom check.What strikes my as odd is that a wizard who can scribe scrolls himself has a higher chance for a mishap than a cleric who never before handled a scroll. (If the Cleric has a higher Wis than the Wizard, which is likely) Not every cleric uses Wisdom as their primary stat. A melee cleric might only be casting buffs and heals (and thus doesn't care about DC), and might want to pump their strength instead, for example. Likewise, NPC clerics or clerics in low-point games won't necessarily have the 18 wisdom required to always succeed on that check. That being said, in general clerics have better odds of keeping anything bad from happening if they misread the scroll, although they have no better (or worse) odds of misreading it in the first place. That's entirely in keeping with a high wisdom, though: Wisdom is associated with paying attention to details, knowing the right thing to do, and doing exactly what you intended on doing - all things which lead to reducing your chance of making a mistake.
Ross: I don't care either way about ASCII art (so long as it's spoilered and not offensive), but it's not against any of the listed policies in the FAQ. If you're going to be removing it, you probably should add it to the list there.
Actually, the bolded part is wrong, which is why Andro's reading makes no sense at all (as opposed to just being annoying). "The creature must take the result of the reroll, even if it's worse than the original roll." Under his system, it would be:
It's also worth noting that the way it's worded, the extra damage counts as extra weapon damage, not positive or negative energy. Which means it helps towards overcoming DR, massive damage, and so on. It also means you can full attack in addition to doing the channel damage. It's a very situational feat.
But make no mistake: she's breaking her vows. I won't disagree about it being vow-breaking, but I do want to emphasize that it's specifically not an offense that they will fall for, per the RAW.
It's worth pointing out that if the characters have an even stat to begin with, they're not likely to appreciate the +1 item very much (some, but not much), while the NPC (who had an odd stat) might be getting the equivalent of a 4000gp +2 item while only giving the PCs 1000gp worth of treasure. Obviously it works the other way too - it only counts as 1000gp worth of treasure but benefits the party as if it was a 4000gp item. That's the inconstancy that's problematical.
I prefer Dunknet's item generator, since it's web-based.
I use the random item generator at http://www.dunknet.net/pathfinder.aspx. It makes generating the items much faster. I also don't bother rolling up minor items, or figuring out exactly which city produced which magic item (and thus what base value should be used for rerolls).
Regardless of the GM's authority in the game, if the players find the house ruling to be unfair, then it probably is. Is it game breaking unfair? That's something the group needs to decide. However, the fact that everyone else brought it up in the group, it is probably unfair for the group. I think it comes down to this: If the GM looks at a class, says Know (any) or Know (all) means that you can put one skill rank into "Knowledge about everything" and get the bonus to all knowledge checks, then every character should be able to take ranks in that skill. After all, there aren't exclusive skills any more. No problem here, just a house rule.If the GM does that, and only classes which have that on their class skill list can do so, but it's open to anyone who takes a level of that class, that's a different house rule, basically granting a new power. If the GM says only the one player can do it, then it's unfair.
So is it better to get Vital Strike and not use full attack then? I could see it being better when you only have a standard action, but is it better than a full attack with 2 or more attacks? If most of your damage comes from your weapon, yes. If most of it comes from static bonuses (like Strength or power attack), or from extra dice (like sneak attack), then no. If it's about even, then I'd go for VS just because you can do it whether or not you move, but for most characters weapon dice tends to be the smallest part of the damage they do.
Off topic to the thread, but I can't tell how to do this. Either I'm focusing on my thumb, in which case I get two images of the wall, or I'm focusing on the wall, in which case I get two images of my thumb...
It's worth pointing out that the flurry "clarification" was quasi-retracted.
So the current state is unclear.
Personally, I'd prefer a month slippage (or a month of "downtime" built into the schedule) and a dedicated "Lets clear up as many questions as possible" effort made for that time instead. That being said, I know that clearing up questions doesn't pay the bills and new books do, and that there's too many moving parts involved in getting a book printed to change the schedule now. Just something to consider for the 2013 schedule...
Sorry, this bothers me:
Grammar:
rough = abrasive, opposite of smooth (pronounced "ruf") rogue = a class with sneak attack (pronounced like "roguh" or "row-guh") rouge = a type of makeup (pronounced like "rooj")
Because I'm not going into this voting for my favorite author; I'm not even sure if I have a favorite author in the bunch since I have liked different ones the best each round. Garrett - there's two things you're forgetting. 1) Every developer who gets to this stage could end up writing for Paizo or a 3pp. This is regardless of whether they actually win or not.
Bottom line: You don't have to win the competition to win as a freelancer with Paizo. You just have to make the most of the next opportunity they give you. Based on your showing here, they now know what you're capable of. And, when they need someone to pitch in on a new product, they'll have each of you as a resource. Just make sure you're available when that call comes. And, once you commit, make sure you deliver on it. You do that and you'll go as far as you want to go. Jason Nelson is a great example of this - he didn't win his year, but he's still been involved with creating material for Paizo. See the rest of that thread for examples. 2) The prize itself:
The intention is to publish the module outlined in the submission, so make sure what you present is not only popular with the general audience, but also publishable by Paizo. Paizo reserves the rights to make changes to the adventure during the editing phase, and will work with the chosen RPG Superstar to develop the best possible adventure product. In short, this very much is a vote on which module we want to see, and very much not a vote on who we want to have create something for Paizo. We might not get the module that was proposed here, but it is the default assumption that we will. Thus when that default assumption changes drastically, it's only fair to inform the voters ahead of time. Otherwise, you would have a huge number of people saying "This isn't what we voted for!"
Because it's so awesome a post, and because it demonstrates just how broken Antagonize is currently, here's a great description of the results of how it works currently:
No, they can't. The relevant quote is:
Orc Blood: Half-orcs count as both humans and orcs for any effect related to race. Feat prerequistes aren't an effect. Bane (humanoid (human))'s bonus is an effect. The bonus from favored enemy (orc) is an effect. But prerequsites aren't.
I'd like to see a small section on minor magical flavor items. Things that adventurers would laugh at, but that you might expect to find in NPC houses (either the wealthier NPCs or the ones in areas where magic items are more common, such as the town around a magical school). For example, in a 3.5 game I once came up with a rocking chair that cast cure minor wounds (heal 1 hp) on the target after they spent an hour sitting in it. It was usable an unlimited amount per day, but only by one person at once, so at most it could heal 24 hp. Basically, it was a "I sit on my porch and rock, and eventually I feel restored." item for NPCs. My players loved it, even though they wouldn't benefit from it at all.
To reframe the question: A first level monk with a temple sword. Can he attack with the sword twice, or must he use an unarmed strike for the second attack his flurry grants him?
Aggro, tanking, and taunting are all concepts that are foreign to tabletop gaming, at least in the sense they're used in an MMO, which is the sense this feat provides. It s a great way to implement speach and communicating skills in combat, just as acrobatics,stealth,sleight of hand etc There's already a mechanism for that in tabletop games which doesn't exist in a MMO. It's called speech and communication skills, as arbitrated by a GM. A feat which forces someone to behave in a very ineffective manner, as an entirely unmagical effect, just makes no sense. If I'm a fragile mage, and I know I'm a fragile mage, what can you possibly yell at me in combat that would make me run over and hit you over the head with my staff instead of casting magic missile at you?
Don't even get me started on my cheap ways to make powerful magic items lol. Please. I'd love to see examples of cheap ways to make powerful items which follow the existing guidelines. There is absolutely no rule support for activating a wand by attaching it to a bow (for example). There isn't even anything similar you can point to. Therefore, its price and how it works are entirely up to the GM. If he wants to give it to you for 5cp worth of the equivalent of duct tape, or make an item which can do that the goal of your epic 25-level quest, both are entirely valid in your own game, and have no bearing on what anyone else might do. There's a forum on these boards for that, and this isn't it. It's the same as saying "My GM lets me lock or unlock any lock, disable any trap, and take control of constructs by giving them the Fonzie bump." I have no argument with that, and if your game is fun with that ability, I say "Go for it!", but it's entirely irrelevant to the rest of us. Just as a thought experiment, how much would a spell-storing weapon which automatically refilled itself from an attached wand cost? It'd be at least a +2 weapon enchant, since Spell Storing itself is a +1. And it does cost gold per use. On the other hand, it's a huge boost in action economy - possibly on par with dancing (which is a +4), or even better if it activates on every swing, not just the first one to connect each round. There's no guidelines for assigning +equivalent prices...
Usually when there's a very restricted list of feats like this, prereqs are ignored. It's likely an oversight that they aren't in this case. But until there's a FAQ, you do have to meet the prereqs. Which leads to the possibility that you can neither take any more feats (because you don't qualify for one or more of them) and yet you can't take another feat (because you haven't taken them all).
When you activate a wand, you're still the caster. Otherwise, you'd never be able to benefit from any wands of personal spells. Therefore, it's one casting of light per person, not per wand. This does mean you can pass a wand around and let everyone use it to get their own casting of Light.
Actually the text for Royal Assassin specifically says: "The Royal Assassin can serve as a public executioner, a headsman, or a shadowy assassin." So he doesn't actually have to be an assassin, but he does have to be feared. On the other hand, there's no penalty for leaving the slot vacant (aside from not getting bonuses), probably because some kingdoms specifically wouldn't want to fill it.
Sure you can. You spend a move action to make the wrong mystic gestures, then a standard action to make the right mystic gestures. Now you've spent a full round casting the spell! :p In other news, I join the chorus of "Why?"
Just to keep this thread going, do you think that the PC should also get an extra Language and for a Wizard an extra 1st level spell for their spell book? I would say no, because those are 1st level bonuses, but I could see an arguement either way. Here's where I disagree with you, and thus the entire chain of logic that's come out of it. The number of spells in your spell book is not an int-based statistic, nor is it tracked. Wizards can have any arbitrary number of spells in their spellbooks. They can have multiple spellbooks, with some spells duplicated across them. They can have only a single spellbook with a single spell because their primary one got destroyed and this is all they've managed to recover. Basically, you have to ask yourself: "Knowing only the class, level, and stat mod, can I define everything related to this?" Skills? Yes: (class+mod)*level. X per day abilities? Yes. DCs? Yes. Bonus spells? Yes. Languages? Maybe (I would say 'You learn a language you could have learned at first level.', but it's unclear). Spells in a spellbook? No.
Outsiders are still outsiders on other planes. They're just not extraplanar. So anything that works against outsiders would still work, but anything that works against extraplanar creatures (such as the dismissal spell) wouldn't.
What you can do, however, is create a book of scrolls. Rather than having scrolls be loose pieces of paper, write them on the pages of a spell book. Of course, then you get the opposite effect of a wizard: You refer to the book to cast spells, but not while preparing.
Animated objects aren't proficient with any weapons that aren't themselves. So it would have the -4 non-proficiency penalty on top of everything else.
I like this summary. I agree with it entirely. This is most definitely a case where the text of the mechanics doesn't fit the intent. In fixing an issue with the 3.5 version of mirror image, they went too far, and now it's up to GMs to house rule one way or the other, because the actual text is impossible to derive a clear ruling from.
Sounds like a house rule for the GM's game. And I'd say it is a good one. It's only a good rule if the GM let the player know in advance. If he didn't mention anything until after the character died, then he's just being a cruel GM.
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