Distant Scholar's page

I must admit: I'm not much of a Cthulhu or H. P. Lovecraft fan. I've never read the stories, and don't really understand the appeal of dread and hopelessness.

But, for those of you who do, there's a Kickstarter project to put a bronze bust of H. P. Lovecraft in the Providence Athenaeum Library. You may want to check it out.

And "Providence Athenaeum Library" is a great name for a library.

[My apologies if this is in the wrong place; I couldn't find a Conventions section.]

I'm considering going to the Origina Game Fair this year. What sort of presence will Paizo and/or Pathfinder have there?

In particular:
* If I wanted to try out Pathfinder Society play, would that be available?
* Would a tryout of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game be available? I know it isn't released until GenCon (I think), but I can still hope for a preview. :-)

I'm considering going to Origins this year, but I don't know much about it.

What's it like? Does it have a particular feel/flavor? In particular, I've gone to GenCon a couple of times; how do the two compare?

What sort of companies have a presence there, and what sort of offerings do they offer?

I've tried looking at their web page, but I couldn't find much useful information about 2013's show there.

Some archetypes/alternate classes get to choose a different type of mount (or animal companion) at later levels than at earlier. Is the effective druid level reduced for such critters?

For example: A gnome samurai can choose a boar mount at 4th level (but not at 1st level). Would the samurai's effective druid level for that mount be 1, or 4?

As official an answer as possible would be appreciated, since it's for a character generator computer program. (I have mine own opinion, but that's just an opinion.)

I just bought the Dragon Empires Gazetteer PDF this morning, and quickly perused it.

I now have the urge to play a Lawful Good cleric with the Darkness and Madness domains.

Or ... is there a way for paladins to get domains? Hmm...

For the geisha bard archetype, what is a "monk weapon"? Is it a weapon a monk gets proficiency in? Is it a weapon with the "monk" special ability? Either? Both? Something else?

Can a geisha choose a hand axe as her weapon? (Monks are proficient, but it doesn't have the "monk" ability.)

Can a geisha choose a butterfly sword? (It has the "monk" ability, but monks apparently aren't automatically proficient.)

Can an alchemist take two archetypes that both reduce the die size of their bombs? For example, in Ultimate Magic, both the Clone Master archetype and the Reanimator archetype reduce bomb damage by one die size. Otherwise, they don't interfere with each other. Can an alchemist take both, and have the standard bombs do Nd3 damage?

(This may also apply to other alchemist archetypes that I don't know about, or haven't been published yet.)

I've (finally) started looking at archetypes; specifically the ones in Ultimate Magic. And I noticed something that I'm not sure how to interpret. In the very first archetype I found.

The chirurgeon archetype for the alchemist loses the poison resistance +4 ability, but not the poison resistance +6 ability. When a chirurgeon hits 8th level, would he have a +2 bonus, a +4 bonus, or a +6 bonus?

My assumption is that he would have a +4 bonus, but I don't know for sure.

So, the monster entry on page 186 of the Bestiary 2 says "gylptodon", while the Appendix 7 and Appendix 8 on page 312 (and Wikipedia) say "glyptodon".

Which is it? Entire worlds hang in the balance!

The Arsinoitherium animal companion lists "trample" as a special ability, but it doesn't list how much damage the trample does. How much damage should it do?

The rules say it should be the same as the creature's slam damage, but an arsinoitherium doesn't have a slam attack.

Some options:
(a) Since it doesn't have a slam attack, it does no damage.
(b) If a large creature had a slam attack, it would do 1d6 damage, so the trample should do 1d6 damage. [Note that the regular creature doesn't follow this rule.]
(c) It should do the same trample damage as the regular creature (2d8).
(d) Since the animal companion's gore and powerful charge are half the damage of the regular creature's gore and powerful charge, the trample should also be half damage (which would be 1d8).
(e) Something else.

Any ideas?

In the Bestiary 2, all of the proteans have a form of change shape in their stat blocks. However, the protean subtype also lists a form of change shape which acts differently from the usual change shape.[1]

Is the stat block change shape supposed to further clarify (and, for the voidworm, override) the change shape from the subtype? Or do they have two different change shape abilities?

If it's the former, it seems strange that an imp can change into various shapes all day, but a protean can't. On the other hand, having two change shape abilities is kind of weird, too.

[1]Specifically, it's limited to 1/day, and has a heal effect attached to changing back. And it has different limits (or lack thereof) on what shape it can change into.

Barring special abilities, a charge must be made in a straight line.

Could a character (perhaps an opponent of a barbarian using ride-by attack with a really fast mount) ready an action to move just after the character charges, thus taking himself out of the line of the charge, rendering the charge useless?

While reading the "PrCs are good"/"PrCs are bad" threads, a thought came to me: could a five-level prestige class be simulated through three prerequisite-heavy feats, ordered in some sort of feat chain, along with a paragraph or two of "fluff" covering the idea? I worked up a quick example.

Edit: It struck me that some people might not realize this is an implementation of the Argent Savant from WotC's Complete Arcane. Credit where credit is due.
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Force Mage
The force mage studies magical force in order to unlock its secrets and control its power.

Force Attack
Your mastery of force spells increases their offensive abilities, and makes them harder to disrupt.
Prerequisites: Knowledge (arcana) 6 ranks, Spellcraft 9 ranks, ability to cast at least five spells with the force descriptor, including one of at least 5th level.
Benefit: You get a +2 competence bonus on attack rolls made with force spells. Force spells you cast that deal hit point damage do +1 damage per die, or +1 total damage if the damage isn't expressed by dice. The DC to counter or dispel any of your force spells is increased by 4.

Force Defense
Your mastery of force spells increases their defensive abilities, and they stay in effect longer.
Prerequisites: Knowledge (arcana) 6 ranks, Spellcraft 9 ranks, ability to cast at least five spells with the force descriptor, including one of at least 5th level.
Benefit: When you cast any force spell that provides an armor or shield bonus to armor class, its bonus is increased by 2. The duration of any force spell you cast is doubled, as if it were affected by Extend Spell, without changing the level or casting time of the spell.

Force Disjunction
Your mastery of force spells allows you to disrupt force effects.
Prerequisites: Force Attack, Force Defense
Benefit: When a force spell or effect deals hit point damage to you, the total damage is reduced by 5. Also, as a standard action, you can dispel a single force spell or effect within 60 feet, even if the effect is normally immune to dispel magic. The DC to dispel an effect is 11 + the spellcaster level of the effect. If the dispelling is successful, all creatures and objects within 10 feet of the effect take 1d6 points of force damage per spell level of the effect.

Thanks to several days worth of insomnia, I finished a spreadsheet comparing the "Monster Statistics by CR" chart on p. 291 of the Bestiary with the actual monsters in the Bestiary. It has given me greater insight as to what is deemed "allowable" for monsters of certain CRs, and more confidence in my ability to make mine own monsters.

The spreadsheet is in Open Document Spreadsheet form, made in OpenOffice. It should open in Excel 2010, although you'll lose the conditional formatting (highlighting stats that are particularly high or low compared to the chart).

Conclusions I've made:

• Oozes and constructs don't fit the chart.
  
• Monsters often have attack bonuses, damage amounts, and/or save DCs that are "too high".
  
• Monsters occasionally have low saves that are "too low", particularly at higher CRs.

Other people might find the spreadsheet useful, and I'm interested in what other people might think about it. And there's a challenge: [at least] one of the monsters is listed under the wrong CR, according to the stat block. Can you find it? [It had the wrong CR in the "Monsters by CR" index in the back.]

This came up in a (3.5) game a little while ago, and I thought I'd ask: is the ice from a wall of ice spell opaque, transparent, or somewhere in between? Or can you choose? In particular, does it affect line of sight?

It isn't specified in the spell. My assumption was "no", but I don't really know for sure.

As I understand it, alchemists don't technically cast spells, so they don't technically have a caster level. So, aside from their built-in Brew Potion ability, they'd need Master Craftsman in order to make other magic items. Does that sound correct?

Also, since alchemists don't technically cast spells, they don't have the spell prerequisites for potions (or other items), so they will always have a tougher DC to aim for, compared to a spell caster. Does that sound correct? If so, how unbalancing would it be to allow them to use their extracts as spell prerequisites, to avoid the increased DC?

The Aspect of the Beast feat (from the Advanced Player's Guide) allows a character one choice of four abilities. It does not have a Special entry that allows it to be taken more than once (unlike, say, Weapon Focus).

My question: Would you allow a character to take it more than once to pick up more than one of the special abilities (one per feat)?

I don't see any problems with allowing it, but there may be something I'm missing.