Wizards get some nice tricks to make up for getting animate spells late.
The command undead spell is difficult to get on a cleric, and provides a pretty substantial increase to the amount of undead you can control - a high-HD skeleton will only take a single 2nd-level spell every week or two, freeing up space in your animate dead control cap.
If you have a cleric capable of casting desecrate in the party, you are at no disadvantage. If not, spend 2k to pick up a vodstick for the pocket desecrate.
Also, if your GM lets you swing it, blood money will let you bypass the onyx costs, provided you can get some cheap/free ability damage removal from a party member (or are willing to sleep it off between raising undead).
EDIT: I was assuming this was for a PC. For an NPC, you can explain away a huge amount of undead with some massed preparations of command undead, far in excess of his HD limit from animate dead. Very handy if you want the PCs to fight a bunch of skeletal T-rexes or something. The cleric spell list has some nice buffs for undead that are easier to set up for an NPC's base than if you are attacking as a PC (unhallow, or even just desecrate).
I made up a handout for the festival's vendors and games for a game I run, using a combination of the suggestions posted here and the info provided in the entries for Sandpoint. Figured this would be a good place to share it in case others would like to use it. Enjoy~
By the way, I'm trying my hand at GMing play by post with a Dreamscarred Press psionics adventure, and I know you guys are all fun to roleplay with, if any of you are interested.
In "Designing Spells" under "Hierarchy of Attack Effects" the possible effects are organized. Damaging effects include examples like fireball and poison. Fireball being an example of an effect dealing energy damage. Poison being an effect dealing ability score damage.
This Is James Jacobs' response to the cleave question. I still believe that the way it is worded is contradictory to his statement here. That being said he is the writer so I guess we have to go with that. I don't know how to source so I apologize.
God be willing, I'll have a functional computer by Monday...
And THIS time, keep those machine spirits happy! I am NOT to be held responsible if you forget your Litanies of Maintenance or Cants of Smooth Operation!
+1 to Mythender. Tons of fun, roll lots of dice, kill gods, try not to become gods.
I also like Star Wars Saga Edition. It's still d20 and largely based on D&D 3.5, so the mechanics will feel familiar. Not sure if that's a plus or not for you.
Full disclosure: I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and running around in the Expanded Universe is a big deal for me :)
Eh: lacking a computer, I'm not around as much as I like, too. We're cool. :D
*yawn*
What does 'Eh:' mean?
Zzz...zzz...zzz
An expression of ambivalence.
Not to be confused with 'eh?', which is a glorious Canadian sentence-finisher meaning "what?", "don't you agree?", or "did you know about the thing I just said?", among other things.
I don't care that the storm strooper isn't white what there better be an explanation for is why he's not Temuera Morrison colored.
Because the Empire stopped using clones because it was cheaper to get them the old fashioned way.
I wonder if there will ever be non-human storm troopers.
In the universe now known as Legends, The Empire of the Hand had non-human stormtroopers. (Source: Survivor's Quest)
In Canon, we'll just have to wait and see. Since they aren't using clones, I'd consider it possible. Real-life budget limitations are probably not as significant either, which makes me think it's even more plausible.
Two-Handed Power Attack: A melee-ranged, AC-targeting cantrip, requiring a greatsword as a focus component, that may be cast only by barbarians (and lesser barbarians, cf. fighter). Martials claim the sole purpose of casters is to increase the amount and effectiveness of these. Primarily used to kill everything after the casters have won the fight (see conditions).
Here's an early preview of Vengence Best Served. Working on it between prepping for my game and my work schedules.
I'd just like to say that this is pretty fantastic. As a fairly new GM, I find the tactical advice and additional explanation you add very helpful. I wish published adventures contained that kind of stuff.
Mihail and Kaid’an
Making your way to the lists again, you are informed that with the nobles now jousting, the rules have been adjusted. Rather than tilting until one horseman is unseated, there will only be three runs, with scores based on the number of lances broken upon the foe’s shield. Should you manage to unseat your foe, you are immediately the victor.
New Joust Rules:
You make three runs. Lances break if you hit the target’s AC. You will make an attack roll to hit the enemy’s shield. AC is as before: 13 + dex, shield focus feat applies.
Should you hit, you may roll a bull-rush attempt to try and knock the opponent out of their saddle, opposed by a Ride check to stay in the saddle.
Each run, you may focus on one facet of your performance:
Aim - Roll twice on attack rolls, but holding steady makes you easier to knock off. Enemy rolls twice on unseat.
Power - Roll twice on unseat, but at a penalty to your accuracy. -4 on attack roll.
Riding - Roll twice to avoid unseating, but reduces your power. Enemy rolls twice to avoid unseat.
Balanced: Roll as normal.
Mihail’s first match of the day is against a tall nobleman in fine plate, whose heraldry displays a black eagle on a red field. His massive black charger paws at the dirt, eager to begin.
Kaid’an, Wisdom DC 11:
From his stance and preparation, you think the other noble is going to focus on his aim this round. Feel free to inform Mihail.
20. "Sorry, just a minute: which hand did you use to open the door?"
Got a rogue's player panicking once, trying to justify why he'd be using his (right-handed character's) left hand to open the door...
21. "Hmm. That's an interesting plan."
22. "How far away are the rest of you standing? Right beside each other, or..."
You know, I should probably do something funny with all the "Tacticslion favorites stuff" posts, but I can't really come up with any one thing (there's really just way too many angles to take on it!), and now it's just sitting there all awkward and not doing something funny like "I shall take over the world!" or something... dang it! :P :D
Do we need a ">>*Tacticslion* favourites ALL your Posts HERE!!<< thread?
Heeeey, while we are at it, why don't we just use the caster level of 1,434,399 as we worked out how to achieve in this thread: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2r6pu?Challenge-Highest-caster-level#1
From there they decided on the frostbite spell or simply transmutation.
Honestly, there are three interpretations at this point: Semi-literal, classic, and trope.
Chekhov's Gun (Classic Edition) is about not including anything irrelevant. This actually isn't totally impossible in a game—just make a note of everything and have it come up later. Could make for an interesting circular sort of campaign.
Chekhov's Gun (Sorta Literal) is more about not including something that seems important and not having it come up. "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." By "sorta literal", I mean we take this at face value—that he's talking about things equivalent to a loaded gun.
Really, it's kinda a misleading metaphor, since what he actually meant was Classic Edition. It was more about being concise and less about not building false expectations. A gun implies the latter.
also shakespeare was not that good and tesla? totally photoshopped it
Chekhov's Gun (Trope Edition) is what I'm talking about here. I think it's the most relevant to RPGs. But if the OP wants to talk about simplistic descriptions, sure. I can see going with them if you have overly proddy players.
Seeing as the OP later posted this...
Arturus Caeldhon wrote:
I am struggling with the idea, because I am a novelist and also a DM. In my books, I adhere very strictly to Chekhov's gun. In my games, however, I want to describe every room in great detail, but not everything is important. I want to add details that are interesting and give the world life, without them necessarily becoming plot points. But oftentimes the players will latch on to something and then drive the plot in that direction, and I would have to stumble to keep up. So if I adhere to Chekhov's gun in the first place, I won't have that issue, but I feel my game will suffer from a lack of detail.
... I figure he means the "Classic Edition", not the TVTropes knock-off.
Great, now I'm thinking up bad advertisements for off-brand firearms that are guaranteed to shoot... eventually, at some point in the future.
Chekhov's Gun in Pathfinder makes as much sense as Chekhov's Gun in football. You can't know what's important to the story until the story is told, and the whole group tells it. Maybe they ignore the high value prisoner instead of interrogating them, and instead run down the crime ring through their rogue's underworld contacts.
I'd replace Chekhov's Gun with "don't obviously waste time". Don't spend 15 minutes RPing a boy getting scolded by his mother at the market unless the PCs have a reason to be interested by that. On the other hand, don't say "The armory is 10x20, it has armory stuff in it". Just go with the amount of description and attention that strike you as right. Don't worry about making everything necessary and irreplaceable in the story, just make sure everything is interesting.
Pretty much this. You can't really cut unnecessary features, since you don't know what is necessary. Your players decide that for you.
Using seeds you planted earlier in description? That's a great thing to do, but it's not Chekhov's Gun.
Starting with a DC 0 Perception check to find an object in the open.
The rules on invisibility give a +20 for being invisible, and another +20 if you are not moving.
You have another +5 for being behind cover like a door. For your average bush I'd probably rule something a little less than that, depending on the size.
Unless the assassin is also invisible (or pretty high level), it would probably be easier for the PCs to locate them instead. If nobody stumbles over the body, it's going to stay lost until the invisibility runs out.
EDIT: If a PC does manage to make that (not sure what level they are in your scenario), I'd probably describe it as noticing a scent or faint tracks / broken twigs in the bush.
In alphabetical order, these are the people who will cause me to read a thread merely because they've posted in it. There are many other people who I consider insightful, entertaining, or just all-around wonderful, but listing everything will take too long and I will miss people anyways.
Ashiel
DeathQuaker
DM_aka_Dudemeister
Evil Lincoln
Kobold Cleaver
Mikaze
Orthos
TOZ
That's right, Cosmo manipulated Earth history to found Canada—beginning with the lost Viking "explorer", Ostog the Over-inebriated—using his stolen SEGMIST (Schadenfreude, Ennui, and General Misery In SpaceTime) X-7 Dimensionizer time booth (currently stuck in appearance as an office cubicle due to a damaged doppelgänger circuit).
Not only that, but now that point in time is FIXED. Managed to swing by a few centuries later to clean things up a little, however, and overall I think it worked out well enough.
Oh, but I think I may have accidentally imprinted some of my behavioural patterns on the populace. If any Canadians out there find themselves apologizing profusely... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. At least you're better behaved than the Americans.
I guess it just seems somewhat powerful to, say, reduce a dragon to 1 HD. I suppose it still requires them failing their Fort save and your beating SR, but still.
It puts a new spin on "dragon slayer" - an evil wizard who kills dragons in the surprise round, with a quickened Pup Shape and Arcane Blast or a no-SR damage spell. Then I guess you just need a way to sneak up on it.
A dragon's type is "Dragon", not "Animal" or "Magical Beast".
For Android devices, there's a great free app in the Google Play store - Pathfinder Spellbook by Chicanery Games. It allows you to filter by any combination of schools. It's a great app for preparing/selecting spells, though it lacks a way to do the reverse and look up a specific spell.
The OGL is great, as people can make their own fixes for things that the published materials lack.
Disclaimer: I don't want to assign motivations, thought processes or feelings to people I don't know. I am not projecting anything onto the GM, just stating a possibility that (I believe) has not been mentioned.
It seems to me that more than any possible metagaming, the GM was upset that the OP looked on the Internet and trivialized the encounter. In that situation, as the GM, I would probably be thinking something along the lines of this:
Hmm, that was a tough encounter. If the come back better prepared and with full resources, they could beat him. I can probably expect them to either leave and come back later, or try again and have another difficult encounter. With their fourth player, they will probably be able to beat this thing, and it should be a good fight.
But then, next session, the player comes along and says (paraphrased obviously) "Hey, I looked up a way to beat this thing on the Internet." Suddenly the difficult encounter is gone with little-to-no effort on the part of the PC's. You could argue the opportunity cost of spell slots, but it's unimportant for my point.
I could understand him being upset at this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the hard encounter is trivial. Some GM's are more about the conflict with players than others, and some are very much into having epic struggles for the players to overcome. If your GM fits into either of these categories, it might be enough to make them angry.
The other issue could be that you looked up the problem. It implies a number of things, most of which do not reflect well upon the GM.
- By searching out-of-game for a solution to the problem, you show a lack of faith in the GM's ability to help the PC's tell their stories.
- It shows that you don't trust that the GM knows what he's doing and feel the need to take matters into your own hands.
- It creates a sort of one-sided arms-race mentality, as the GM is now pitting monsters not only against the players, but the entire hivemind of the Internet. Even if you never look anything up in this manner again, you have shown your willingness to do so.
- It implies that you find the GM to be unfair, as you resort to doing something he considers unfair in return. Not necessarily your intention, but could be read that way.
Now, it's possible that implications things are well-deserved, but by making a gesture that indicates these things instead of openly discussing it, the GM may feel betrayed and defensive, leading to his brusque reaction.
So, a bunch of Canadians die and go to Hell.
Satan walks in on the bunch of them, and sees them standing around in the flames, smiling and cheering.
"Why are you happy? You're in Hell!" he bellows.
"It's always cold in Canada, and this is the first time we've been warm!" they reply.
Satan storms off and turns up the heat, but the only response is more cheering. "Oh yeah, warmer! Warmer!" shout the Canadians.
He sets the heat to maximum, but the Canadians still are enjoying it. After thinking for a moment, he turns the heat off completely.
To his surprise, the Canadians start going nuts, cheering even more wildly.
He heads back to ask them why. One of them stops screaming and jumping about long enough to respond,
"Hell just froze over! The Leafs must have won the Cup!"
I found this thread about a year ago when I started playing Pathfinder, and my group has been using S-I since day 1. It's worked out great for us, especially as we tend towards low-magic party compositions. As a GM, I really like how it resolves the strangeness of two-fellows-bashing-on-each-other-for-a-full-minute that the standard rules gives you. For full disclosure, I also want to note that we use a 15-minute period for R and R, rather than the original 5 (which I see has changed to 10 now).
On the note of long-term healing of injuries, which has come up in a game involving my squishy lvl 1 wizard who tends to get 1-shotted down to negatives, we found (accidentally, due to bad memories) that using the standard rules for recovering HP works just fine for injury damage. (The 10% rule would probably work just as well, as it is pretty close in most cases.)
Laurefindel's point here:
Laurefindel wrote:
So my point is; even if this healing rate is stupendously fast, it may be slow enough to serve the purpose and drive the point that without magic, healing is not an instantaneous process. A few days is enough for the villain to get away or to otherwise screw up the PC's plans. It's probably enough for the magic user to craft a magic item, but not three. A few days is a nice downtime that doesn't stretch into a full season.
is pretty much exactly what I found: it was a long enough period of time to be meaningful in the game, but not to the point that it hurt playability. Even with a couple days of assisted total bed rest, it took a good chunk of time to recover, which cost us time we needed to extend our lead on our pursuers.
Thanks for all your work on this, EL and everyone else involved. You've put together a really slick, easy-to-use ruleset that makes a lot of sense.
376. A demiplane, empty save for a temple housing 7 orbs and a large gem that controls them, guarded by a sole warrior, is breached by an evil wizard of vast intellect. He defeats the guardian and shatters the gem to release a powerful creature, causing the collapse of the demiplane and the dispersal of of the seven orbs into the material plane. The PC's must race him to find the orbs, as feeding their energy to the creature causes it to grow stronger. Should it gain the power of all seven orbs, it will be nigh-unstoppable, and the wizard will use it's power to cleanse the nation before he creates his own utopia.
I wasn't aware that this was a problem. It specifically states that you can substitute a trip for a melee attack (as opposed to say a grapple which specifically requires a standard action) and an attack of opportunity is clearly that. Am I missing something? This appears to be pretty clearly RAW to me...
The key is that (as far as I know) the AoO comes before they actually stand up. Therefore, you cannot actually trip them, as they are still prone until after the AoO.
... a lot of the things I grew up believing in, like public education, LGBT rights, and state/federally funded programs like the ones that helped me find employment following high school and college, were all basically lies designed to undermine the fabric of the western world to usher in a new age of totalitarianism, and that by benefiting and contributing to these sorts of things, I've aided and abetted that collapse. That by getting a BA in English Literature for my four-year degree was a waste of my time, effort and money, and that my siblings are going down the same path with degrees in Music Therapy and Theater/Performing Arts.
Democracy is about the rule of the people. When you think "hey, I like the idea of public education. Let's get that!" and enough people agree, then you have democracy. If this is considered a 'Marxist' idea, who cares? The people are creating a system that they want, and that they selected themselves. They wanted public education, they got public education. The people decided that employment programs were a good thing, so they developed and supported them.
The whole 'bashing liberal arts' thing confuses me. (As an aside - isn't philosophy a liberal art?) Learning how to do things other than science is not a problem. Your BA in English lit will not usher in the collapse of the world as you know it, nor was it a waste. It means that you learned When we stop learning and thinking, that is when the problem starts. Education should not be indicated as the enemy of society - it built society as we know it.
Really, I find the whole "things that we acknowledge as good in society were actually just put in place as the bait in a trap set up by a spooky power that is trying to destroy everything" too much like conspiracy theory thinking. Socialism is not a dirty word. Just take a look at Norway, most of Europe, at that, or even your friendly neighbours from up north. We get along just fine, and our society is not crumbling around our ears.