Cos1983's page

Cid Ayrbourne wrote:

... "You have to leave the editor something to change. Once he pisses on it, he likes the flavor better, and buys it." ~ Robert Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land

I used to have a boss like that. We always had to make sure to leave some obvious sloppy mistake in our plans because he felt he had to change something. If he couldn't find an obvious mistake he would change some of the correct stuff just to exert his influence on the project. It was like living in a Dilbert cartoon.

Your accounting department is full of trolls too? ;)

Please have plenty of books for me to buy at GenCon again this year!

. Primarily that's so if someone can't show up, someone else can run Zoogar The Neck or Blue Punjflaffel or whoever. "

Pepsi?

A human sorcerer should have 3 feats at 4th level. Sorcerers do not get a bloodline bonus feat until 7th level.
For spells a human sorcerer can have a maximum of 9-10 0th level spells, 4-5 1st level spells and 1 2nd level spell.

On the subject of scrolls and somatic components.

pg 150 CRB

Pg 490 CRB

Interpret that as you will.

Despite the threads being locked they sometimes contain useful information. Having all of that information unavailable because people lost their temples does not help anyone.

Maybe if they were bigger and stood out more they wouldn't lose them so easily. ;P

I like your break down. I think I might adopt something similar for an e6 game I want to run.

I just started a new character this last weekend and I'm struggling to play him. Here are his Stats

STR: 18
DEX: 13
CON: 15
INT: 9
WIS: 13
CHR: 17
He is the first paladin I've played but I didn't have a lot of choice with the stats I rolled and the lack of healing in our group. My problem is that I am having a hard time understanding how "slow" he would be. I've looked at several articles and I'm still not sure, could anyone give a movie character example or something? I suppose the hardest part is the reasonable wisdom and high charisma combined with low intelligence. Someone in my group said Forest Gump but I'm thinking that is a pretty extreme example.
The one thing I did build into his history is that he does not value books, he believes scholars would be better suited learning a sword than spending time reading. Let me know if more info would help.
Much obliged

Jack O'Niel from star gate.

Echolocation from Ultimate magic. Although it is not on the cleric spell
list.

There is also a helm in the pathfinder society handbook which gives blindsight 20 feet but with some rather important restrictions (it can't detect undead, constructs, creatures that are immune to mind affecting powers etc.)

Depending on your DM's view of ammunition abundant ammo is another good spell you can have.

I think the Dip is worth it more for the spells you will have access to than the increased saves. In my experience a PC who even moderately focuses on his saving throw generally don't have a great chance to fail (unless the DM pumps the DC).

Whiskey Jack wrote:

Fromper wrote:

... He just doesn't have to roll any dice for most types of performances, and the perform skills are usable untrained, so it doesn't matter if you have any ranks in perform.

And so Absalom opens it's first Karaoke bar. :-)

You know its funny, but this kind of happened in a game over the weekend. Though in this case there were dice involved. Our bard was trying to impress a nymph so he sang a song, and my charismatic summoner, and the cleric (also good charisma) sang backup in the form of aid another. But we actually sang the song at the table with the cleric and my summoner doing backup to the bard player. It was a contemporary song, and we were aweful (non of us are talented singers) but it was fun.

I am imaging that you Rick Rolled the nymph. Don't spoil my illusion please ;)

In any event, I guess you were asking about ideas for introducing new characters rather than general thoughts on player death. One suggestion is to prepare notes on several groups operating in Ustalav who are foes of the undead -- The Order of the Palatine Eye, The Pathfinder Society, the Pharasma church, Lastwall, a Royalist group, etc. Then if a new character needs to come in I would have the player choose from one of those groups to provide the character some backstory and motivation. It seems reasonable to presume that those groups could be tailing the WW as well and a character from one of the groups could show up if a current PC dies...

I completely forgot about Lastwall and the royalist having a vested interest in stopping the Whispering Way.

I don't mind that the PC's died but I feel the Carrion Crown AP doesn't leave a great deal of time for PC's to go get one of them raised in the middle of an adventure :(.

Diego Rossi wrote:

You are right, as much as it pain me, SKR example say exactly that.

I take no pleasure in being right about this. It's horribly dumb. Greatest failure of Pathfinder in my eyes is that the crafting system actually got worse than 3.5.

We house rule it to be like you think it is, honestly. Otherwise everyone in the party would carry a Gate Candle with their potions. Why not.

In the original printing of the core rulebook there was a single line of text that prevented that.

And then this happened (Pathfinder RPG Core Rules Errata, 1st Printing)

Page 460
In the Magic Items Description section, under Caster
Level, delete the last sentence of the second paragraph.

Like you as a house rule I leave that line in.

Zonto wrote:

The ability to add/remove conditions and common buffs from spells and class features (bardic performance) is key to awesomeness.

I don't care if it has a built in dice roller or not. I prefer real dice!

Currently, the player can modify anything they want with temporary buffs. But they are all lumped together as a misc. bonus to that stat/skill/whatever. Is that sufficient, or would you prefer something that allowed you to add a number of bonuses to every stat and then remove them individually when they weren't needed?

I can see that being useful as an option.

If you are making a character sheet manager for android I can't wait to see it.

Right now there are a lot of dice rollers and initiative trackers but nothing that allows you to enter a character sheet.

I think Mabven's suggestion for a dice roller might clutter up a character sheet.

Also it would be good if it could tell you where to find any feats or special abilities. i.e. Power Attack-CRB pg.131 or Antilife Shell-CRB pg.242.

I am currently on book 4 of the Carrion Crown adventure path and I am just wondering if other GM's are finding very lethal.

I began the campaign with 4 players at my table and they were 15 point buy builds.

After the first book I have one character death (the player stayed) and one character drop out due to work requirements.

In the second book I had a party of 3 players (and things were okay) until the Baron's Keep). My brother died once again in the final dungeon.

By the end of book 2 we had added a 4th player to the table and things were looking up. In fact the player who had left due to work commitments was able to return to the table bringing the total up to 5 PC's.

Midway through the third book the cleric had to leave due to starting up school and so our table was reduced once more to 4 players.

It was in the final "dungeon" that the player who had returned to the table at the beginning of the book met with his untimely end.

It was after this death that I lost two players. My brother had to leave town for his school co-op and second player had to leave for work requirements (the fellow who had returned and died stayed on and created an inquisitor of Desna).

However I managed to find two more players and now my table is back up to 4 as I began book 4 "Wake of the Watchers".

The book has been proceeding well and my party hasn't thrown me any real curve balls in terms of decision making. And in spite of a few misconceptions about the nature of some of the antagonists things went pretty well until...

So there you have it 5 deaths in 4 books. I don't really believe any of them were the fault of the players but this has left me with a very weak reason for the party to continue hunting the Whispering Way (only 1 character from the original party remains.) Thankfully my party wants to keep going but I am running out of ideas on how to integrate new characters to the party.

In fact in order to save the last session from ending an hour and a half early I just teleported the two new characters into the party (with the consent of 3/4 players at the table) hand waving any introductions or attempts fitting them into the plot.

If anyone has some suggestions on how to keep introducing new characters please let me know. At this rate I'm going to have at least 2-3 more deaths.

So, I have a couple of super high AC people in my game at the moment,

1)Cavalier Alchemist, 2) Armored Hulk Alchemist and 3) Vivisector/Armored Hulk. With mutagens up they're running around AC 20-22 and have the option to use Shield extracts which push their AC up another 4 points.

The thing is, they've just hit level 4. Apparently people are willing to club together to get the combat monsters full plate really early in the game and not a lot of monsters I was using previously, even Trolls were requiring 17s and up to hit them.

I've run into some luck dealing with the party using Gunslingers with Muskets, but that seems to be only one part of a panapoly of things I should be doing. What else could I use to challenge these 3 rather crazy characters while letting the other PCs not instantly die? What other sources of touch attacks are there? Are there any good Will save spells to use?

(Other PCs are, Conjuration specialized Wizard, Bear Druid, Oracle, and a Cavalier Bard specced for social)

If you are feeling mean swarms are nasty. Especially if you were to design a CR appropriate variation on the Tick swarm from Bestiary 2.

Spirit Ranger, Inquisitor, Archeologist Bard, and a Magus...

Walk into a bar.

I have to concur with Evil Paul. It really hinges on how the mayor is portrayed.

I am currently running this for my group and everything seems to be happening in the right order.

I would like to see some belts, headbands, rings, cloaks, and amulets that are actually worth giving up the save, AC, and stat increases for.

The sun pretty much instantly crushes anything that isn't either an ooze or a native of the plain of fire (provided it hasn't already vaporized them). The only option they give for getting around high pressure/gravity is using Wish to create a temporary variant Cube of Force that protects against crushing damage.

Distant Worlds is rather unhelpful on the subject of pressure/gravity actually. The only place with enough of it to matter is the sun, and the only solutions they give are the above Wish, and various suggestions to turn into things from the plain of fire. I actually would have really appreciated a pressure-resistance spell.

You could use the underwater pressure rules to devise something. Also for underwater Freedom of Movement allows you to operate without fear of taking damage from high pressure so that could be an option in other high gravity environments.

Chobemaster wrote:

It gets wonky if you consider you can still by rule breathe with it at, IDK, 1000 feet depth, which is more pressure than a thrown liquid, but hey, what can you do?

It's still the *most* logical way to encompass the description of the item.

I'm really asking (haven't had the chance to do anything more than skim Distant Worlds at this point), but are there rules for high gravity/pressure environments? I'm picturing a smudge of broken bones and bruised muscle, surrounded by a pocket of breathable air, at the bottom of the ocean.

There are rules for deep underwater rules that deal with extreme pressure. in the core book under environment. It's at the very tail end of the chapter.

Your player's shouldn't be punished. They should have to deal with the consequences of their actions. If that means their characters are punished so be it.

Looks great. Too much wood of my taste but it definitely looks good.

DeathQuaker wrote:

What the desire for handwraps boiled down to is "I want to be able to use something that can be enchanted like a weapon but uses my unarmed strike damage." I don't remember anyone asking about NOT being limited to punches.

Ah, so you want your cake and to be able to eat it, too. Why ever use a cheap-to-enhance weapon (with weaker damage) when you can use a handwrap that lets you deal unarmed strike damage and add enhancement bonuses and flaming to it? Why put a +5 enhancement bonus on your kama when you could add an ability that lets you deal 2d10 damage instead of 1d6?

The same reason you pick any sub optimal weapon. Just 'cause.

Cos1983 wrote:

shallowsoul wrote:

You can't justify something with the "not making sense" excuse because it's a poor one. Magic item creation and essence of the creator has been in fantasy for a long long time.

I think both James and Sean have provided logical responses to your question.

Saying that you disagree doesn't change that you now have your answer.

Emmmm not logical, opinionated yes, but not logical.

Well you are entitled to your opinion.

You can't justify something with the "not making sense" excuse because it's a poor one. Magic item creation and essence of the creator has been in fantasy for a long long time.

I think both James and Sean have provided logical responses to your question.

Saying that you disagree doesn't change that you now have your answer.

Cheapy wrote:

I can just imagine James laughing maniacally right now.

I can imagine that too!

It's not imagining when it's out loud.

Core Rulebook, Page 12 wrote:

Nonplayer Character (NPC): These are characters controlled by the GM.

Asking for FAQs to include things like this is the reason we can't have nice things.

+1

> news link <.

.

Imagine that. You paid cash for your house, you don't have a mortgage
and a bank comes and forecloses on you.

What a world we have crafted for ourselves...

This deserves the Slowpoke meme... :P

I bought the Beginner Box some time ago, so I would be able to play DnD with my friends again. Nobody wanted to GM at the time and I was willing to take one for the team. It was the first time I ever GM anything, only get small tidbits of how I'd see others do it themselves. Now, they ALL want to run through own games after the huge success of the campaign!

But enough of that, I just finished the campaign the box gives you with a couple of my friends. But I'm very much confused about how to distribute experience and when/if they actually leveled up or not. So I was wondering if someone could explain to me how experience gain and distribution works.

The group consisted of the normal party: Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard. But I, also, had a Sorcerer join the party as well. So, final total was five players.

There is an experience chart in the core rulebook (I guess that wasn't included the beginner box).

To find out when they are supposed to level up refer to page 30 of the Core Rulebook.

Manyshot has a dex requirement of 17

RAW or not GM has the final say, but I believe your correct in terms of the rules as they are written.

Assuming the fighters don't fold like lawn chairs...
Flanking + Aid Another gives them a +20% increased chance to hit.

I think the devs need to reverse their ruling and say it only works with the claws from the lesser totem.

I think outside of PFS play DM's need to put their foot down and say "No, not in my game" if they don't agree with the rule.

By the RAW he would have a favored terrain for all of Hell. That said the RAW isn't based around having a campaign in Hell it assumes most of your time will be spent on the material plane.

Favored Terrains
Cold (ice, glaciers, snow, and tundra)
Desert (sand and wastelands)
Forest (coniferous and deciduous)
Jungle
Mountain (including hills)
Plains
Planes (pick one, other than Material Plane)
Swamp
Underground (caves and dungeons)
Urban (buildings, streets, and sewers)
Water (above and below the surface)

If your campaign is taking place only in Hell I would recommend treating it like the Material Plane. i.e. it alone is not a valid favored terrain.

Also I would like to point out that unless your ranger is doing something tricky Favored terrain really isn't a huge deal it provides a bonus on Initiative, Stealth, Perception, Knowledge (geography), and Survival checks.

Here's a pretty good example of a high damage blaster sorcerer.

He can hit a foe with a maximized fire snake for 127 damage followed by a quickened fire snake for an average of 89.5 damage for a total average of of 216.5 damage per round to multiple enemies. He even has dazing spell, so he can stun-lock multiple enemies while he wears them down with his direct damage.

Thanks to intensify spell, he can blast well with lower level spells too, and by the time he reaches 20th-level will be dealing around 290 damage to multiple enemies at once. No army will be able to stand against him.

And that's not even optimized. If he had empower spell and a metamagic rod, he could do far more damage every round. With different spells or feat/class/ability choices, he could deal just as much damage, but of varying energy types.

You need to shift 2 points into Spellcraft Spell Perfection requires 15 ranks.

Cos1983 wrote:

You would need to make your free attack before the end of your turn.

Casting the spell is a standard action.

Drawing the weapon is a move action.
Attacking is a free action.

You can take all three, in that order, in one turn.

Cast Spell. Draw weapon. Attack. (Standard. Move. Free.)

Absolutely correct, with a 1 handed weapon.

I don't see why that works with a longsword but not with a broadsword. The hand doesn't need to be empty because it's not still casting. If it was still casting, you would have to make a concentration check during the move and if you got hit or whatever.

James Jacobs (Creative Director) wrote:

if you're wielding a 2H weapon, you can let go of the weapon with one of your hands (free action). You're now only carrying the 2H weapon, not wielding it, but your free hand is now free to attack or help cast spells or whatever. And at the end of your turn if your free hand remains free you'd be able to return it to grip your 2H weapon so you can still threaten foes and take attacks of opportunity if you want.

You would need to make your free attack before the end of your turn. Since you are not wielding the weapon until the end of your turn I don't see how you could make an attack with the 2 handed weapon that you are holding as opposed to wielding as a straight Magus.

An item that grants a non-resistance saving throw bonus is 2000 gp x the bonus squared.

Assuming your GM allows you to craft this item it is actually 48,012 market value or 24,006 for crafting.

pg 550
Save bonus (other)1 Bonus squared x 2,000 gp

If you have ready Wheel of Time the test for Aes Sedai and Wise One's is a good idea of the sort of thing that would happen in the Test of the Star Stone.

It isn't something that the you should be able to do based on gear or level.

Your party should be able to handle the encounter.

Especially if they use knowledge checks to determine the general weaknesses of Devils. (i.e DR/good) That little bit of knowledge will allow them to prepare Align Weapon (Good) or purchase the necessary scrolls/oils before hand.

Hi-

I'm just wondering about the relation ship between charisma and appearance. Is there any? I've heard some people say that a high charisma score reflects positively on character appearance. I'm assuming because it applies to the diplomacy skill.

Anybody have high charisma, yet ugly looking characters?

Now what about the intimidate skill? I can understand high charisma characters being intimidating. Just about any kind of mob movie would give you some examples of those characters. However what about physically intimidating? If I have a character that is say 7 foot tall and chews nails, but has no charisma, how is that not intimidating?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Back in 2nd Edition there was an equation between Charisma and appearance. As far as I can remember this equation was removed in 3.0 and has continued to Pathfinder.

Charisma now is a measure of your overall social ability (as far as it's relation to skills go) and while being beautiful might help it is not required.

Have you looked at the Word Magic from Ultimate Magic? That might work well as a starting point for a WOT channeler.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland wrote:

Again, accurate according to what measure? If the assumption is that all of the core races are equal in relative power level, what do we gain by pointing out that some races in some on that list may be better than others? And then you have to ask the question, better at what?

Combat. That's the core point of the whole system.

How many hit points can be removed.
How to avoid having hit points removed.
How to beat saving throws.
How to avoid failing a saving throw.

Everything else are just varying degrees away from those central premises.

A race that is packed with non-combat utility abilities can be plenty fun, but once you get into combat they generally won't fare as well as a race that had a +4 Strength and +4 Wisdom. The first race might be good at getting information that is important to the fight or the trap ahead, and may even help with getting a surprise round, but the second race is going to chop things to bits and be able to resist nasty mind effects that would stop them in their tracks.

I have to respectfully disagree. If that was the case the core rule book would be perhaps 150 pages, maybe 200.

As Stephen pointed out before things can very greatly from one game to another.

I had this come up last night. Based on Pull's description (mechanically), I agree with AWizardInDallas.

Mmm. I think there's something wrong with this rule IMHO

One point of interest the original printing (which I have at home) did have one sentence in the magic item creation that stated you could not create items that had a caster level above your current caster level.

It has since been removed by errata.

I personally still stick with that rule because I do not enjoy crafting shenanigans which my players seem to engage in with great gusto.

I plan to use the new armor as DR variant rules but there are a few areas of concern that I have in regards to defense and critical hits.

1. "In this alternative system, a creature does not have an
Armor Class (AC); it instead has a Defense score. Defense is
similar to touch AC in the standard Pathfinder Roleplaying
Game rules, but it also adds the shield bonus (including any
enhancement bonus to the shield), and any enhancement
bonus to armor.
Defense = 10 + shield bonus + Dexterity modifier + other
modifiers (including armor’s enhancement bonus, but not
armor bonus or natural armor bonus)"

Does this mean that size modifiers no longer matter? there are part of touch AC but they don't factor into this new equation.

2. "In this alternative system, when a creature threatens a
critical hit, it does not make a critical hit confirmation
roll. Instead, the target of that critical hit makes a critical
defense check instead. A critical defense check is 1d20 + a
bonus equal to the creature’s DR + the creature’s Dexterity
modifier (up to the maximum Dexterity bonus allowed by
any armor worn) + the sum of any def lection and shield
bonus to Defense.
Critical defense check bonus = creature’s DR + Dexterity
modifier + shield bonus to Defense + deflection bonus"

If you bypass a creature's DR is its Critcal Hit Defense (CHD) reduced? for example if you threaten to critical a skeleton and you by pass its DR/armor but not its DR/bludgeoning is it's CHD now lower by 4? (4 is the standard DR/armor for a skeleton).

There seems to be alot of overthinking going on here. Keep it simple...

1) Greater Magic Fang + Permanency + Amulet of Mighty Fists for other additional abilities (RAW)
2) Create Magic Tattoo + Craft Magic Arms and Armor would also be an acceptable compromise, where CMAA is a prerequisite for the ability to apply enhancing tattoos. (Not quite RAW)
3) Enchant other items like "hand wraps" as has been discussed.
4) "Brass" Knuckles (RAW) Note* Of course the material can be altered to deal with certain DR.
5) 3PP feats and abilities as compensation (Not quite RAW)
6) Invent a new Item Creation Feat to cover the apparent lack of capability for enhancement. (Not quite RAW)

These are your options, take your pick. I prefer options 1 and 4 myself.

There is a 7) from Inner Sea Magic. Page 16 Spell Tattoos. I don't know what the cost is like v. an Amulet of Mighty Fist, but they do seem to fit the situation of making your hands magic.

really? That seems kind of counter-intuitive to me, *smiles evilly* but this will make it all the more fun.

Leo is correct, since the second Core Rule book errata there is no caster level requirement on any item save qualifing for the feats to make said item.

*EDIT* Sorry I should have mentioned weapons and armor are exlcude from my definition of items. I meant staves, wands, scroll, rings, wonderous item etc.

Obviously you will want to clear any thing with your GM (unless you are the GM) and you should remember that the pricing is only a guide line as opposed to a perfect formula that will allow you to generate balanced items all the time.