hmm...ok. sounds like there's room for rule creation here.
as items can have int, wis, and chr higher than most PCs, i think its a little more than just goading or a telepathic chant...
one of my characters has the leadership feat, and his cohort is an awakened intelligent item, and the rest of the followers are standard intelligent items.
So, I read the core book - pg 535, ego battles and the accompanying will save to stay in control, or else all the bulleted items on that page may happen.
But, that all appears to be game fluff.
What is the game mechanics behind the item taking control? Is it similar to Magic Jar or Familiar Melding, where mental stats are swapped but physical stats remain?
How exactly does the domination happen?
to be honest, it sounds like a mundane version of the summoner's synthesist archetype ability:
Fused Eidolon:
A synthesist summons the essence of a powerful outsider to meld with his own being. The synthesist wears the eidolon like translucent, living armor. The eidolon mimics all of the synthesist’s movements, and the synthesist perceives through the eidolon’s senses and speaks through its voice, as the two are now one creature.
While fused with his eidolon, the synthesist uses the eidolon’s physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), but retains his own mental ability scores (Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma). The synthesist gains the eidolon’s hit points as temporary hit points. When these hit points reach 0, the eidolon is killed and sent back to its home plane. The synthesist uses the eidolon’s base attack bonus, and gains the eidolon’s armor and natural armor bonuses and modifiers to ability scores. The synthesist also gains access to the eidolon’s special abilities and the eidolon’s evolutions. The synthesist is still limited to the eidolon’s maximum number of natural attacks. The eidolon has no skills or feats of its own. The eidolon must be at least the same size as the synthesist. The eidolon must have limbs for the synthesist to cast spells with somatic components. The eidolon’s temporary hit points can be restored with the rejuvenate eidolon spell.
While fused, the synthesist loses the benefits of his armor. He counts as both his original type and as an outsider for any effect related to type, whichever is worse for the synthesist. Spells such as banishment or dismissal work normally on the eidolon, but the synthesist is unaffected. Neither the synthesist nor his eidolon can be targeted separately, as they are fused into one creature. The synthesist and eidolon cannot take separate actions. While fused with his eidolon, the synthesist can use all of his own abilities and gear, except for his armor. In all other cases, this ability functions as the summoner’s normal eidolon ability (for example, the synthesist cannot use his summon monster ability while the eidolon is present).
hmm..Playing devil's advocate, as the direction this thread is now going seems pretty risky.
If the BB is already predefined, as is being described above, and it’s just a matter of 'tapping' into pre-existing abilities, why would I even need to take a level of Magus?
I could be any class, kill the magus or just steal the sword, and use UMD to access all the inherent abilities that are held within.
Base class emulation is DC 20, add on whatever additional stipulation you want, GM could even state it's a DC 35. And by 5th level I could meet that.
Throw in alignment restrictions and anything else you want.
Doesn't really change the difficulty that much.
what happens when you take an 8th level character that has 5 lvls of paladin and 3 lvls of magus-blackblade? = A whole lot of awesome-sauce!
take boon companion and throw in Eldritch Heritage just for added flavor, and now you have an arcane bonded, divine bonded, intelligent weapon of DOOM!
however, time and time again we are expected to read between the lines.
if an ability was not to reiterate every single word, then why not say: 'all standard restrictions apply'
there are several spells and items, that go outside of the normal for what a reasonable person understands in this game.
'Ring Of Revelation, lesser' is an example.
if, at level 1, i was to receive this ring, would that mean i am able to take a revelation that would typically require me to be up to 6th level?
to be reasonable, we would assume that this item works as writen.
or are we to be reasonable and read between the lines to understand we should be 6th level?
bring UMD into the equation, and we dont even have to be an oracle to gain the bonuses of that revelation, we only have to do a skill check every hour, and anyone can gain the feats.
in home games, each rule was intrepreted by the DM to dictate what was reasonable, and they had the final say of the mater. but, in today's game era, we are now playing with a group of DMs. with forums, and posts, and society funcitons.
which makes it even more cumbersome as a player, as now we have to be able to read between the lines of written rules both in book and forums.
and from one table to another. from one store location to another.
its like hearing everyone quote the below statement:
"So just because the grid has a square for "15 feet away" and a square for "5 feet away," but no square for "10 feet away," using that corner path doesn't mean you're magically teleporting from 15 feet to 5 feet; you are passing through a 10-foot-radius band around the creature, and therefore you provoke an AOO."
is this for all types of movement?
are we supposed to understand this rule only applies when moving more than 10', but doesnt apply when taking a 5' step?
one reasonable perspective is that a 5' never provokes, yet, from the other reasonable perspective, you are stepping in from my 15' range to my 5' range. which should provoke an aoo.
we talk about players being reasonable, but how does that assumption fit when there are several descriptions for rule sets that are anything but that
So, I conceed. I made this thread so people could post all the things they have seen played wrong at their PFS table.
but, instead, this has devolved into 222 posts about grids & reach weapons discussion.
to bring this back to PFS and away from general rules:
So many times I have seen judges who, in the earlier season scenarios that give 2 faction missions say,
"you get one PP for the Scenario Mission, and one PP for doing either of the faction missions"
this is wrong!
or they say:
"you get one PP for the Scenario Mission, and one PP for doing both of the faction missions"
The correct answer is:
"you get NO (as in zero) PP for the Scenario Mission, and one PP for each of the faction missions you complete"
edit: let us recapture this thread and drag it back to Society topics! Please! go to the Rules board for rules ...ah... discussions.
ok, this is one that i'm actually interested in.
i have seen GMs go so many different ways on this.
1. Produce flame – is not a touch spell, its a range 0' spell
2. Reach weapons – cannot reach an opponent in a diagonal square 10’ away (as that square actually counts as 15’ away)
3. 5’ step when moving from that same diagnal square 10' away – provokes an AOO as the diagnal movement counts as moving 15’ to 5’
4. Mage armor, shield, or other protection spells that add armor or shield bonus – do not add to CMD
5. Move enhancement bonus does not stack with monk’s increase movement
6. Move enhancement bonus does stack with Barbarian’s increased movement
7. Anyone can disable a nonmagical traps if they are skilled in disable trap
8. Lunge Feat – additional reach only counts on your turn - doesnt threaten squares when its not your turn
9. Flat-footed/Dexless characters do not add Dex bonus to CMD
10. Reach weapons suffer soft cover penalties when attacking through people
11. Aid another only works if the aiding PC can meet the required DC the primary PC is performing
12. Aid another in combat only works for those that threaten the same opponent
13: Jump checks are really hard to meet for vertical distance (I do not care that your skill is 40+ you can't jump up 60'
14: You can tumble through difficult terrain, movement costs double to tumble, and double to move through the terrain. This is an exception to the general rule that two doublings are equivalent to a tripling.
15. PFS does not require a recently raised character to record a Negative Levels from death.
16. You can choose your favored class bonus every level (not just at 1st).
17. Eidolons disappear at negative con, not at 0 like normal summons.
18. Gunslingers are ridiculously complicated and should not be played.
19. Witch's Fly hex is a (SU), which requires a standard action to activate.
20. AOO happen prior to the action that trigger them. Preventing a ‘trip-lock’ situation where opponent is continuously tripped.
21. Spell-like abilities require a standard action to activate, at-will, only refers to how many times a day they can be used.
22. When not in danger or distracted, characters can take 10 on skill checks or ability checks, this does not require 10x the amount of time to use. It works as if the character rolled a natural 10.
I did some research a couple months ago, and I agree with your #2 and #3. (I'm not sure what James Jacobs has to say on the matter, but the CRB is pretty specific.) The rest of your post, I'm not sure about.
I am pretty certain, though, that it's not in the right section of the boards. Unless you want to talk about rules that are specific to the PFS organized play environment, this belongs under Rules Question, not PFS.
fair enough. i was specifically reaching out to the PFS crowd, to see what other common misconceptions have been noticed at the pfs tables.
but, i understand the value of having this under the rules questions - though none of my points are questions, they are observations.
the above 9 items, are common things i have seen players make the mistake of doing/not doing. and i was reaching out to invite others to post things they have seen at the table.
i did not start this so you would have to take up the mantle of trying to disput them.
however, for both posts above:
for #2, please refer to srd, its right. trust me.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat/space-reach-threatened-area-te mplates
#1, all i was saying is its not a touch spell. its a range 0' spell.
it does not allow you to use a full attack action, and have all of your natural attacks do flame damage.
its a standard action to use either the melee range or thrown range.
#4, all i am saying is that they dont add to your CMD. ive seen several mages try to add mage armor bonus to their cmd and it isnt right.
As I have been playing PFS, I have noticed issues that would crop up several times by random players at my table. So, I thought I would start a thread with the intent to bring to light common misconceptions that players may have unwittingly done.
Feel free to add any that you have encountered in your travels as well
The below cases are some of those witnessed examples:
1. Produce flame – is not a touch spell, its a range 0' spell
2. Reach weapons – cannot reach an opponent in a diagonal 10’ square (counts as 15’)
3. 5’ step – provokes an AOO when stepping in from a diagonal square 10’ to 5’ (counts as 15’ to 5’)
4. Mage armor, shield, or other protection spells that add armor or shield bonus – do not add to CMD
5. Move enhancement bonus does not stack with monk’s increase movement
6. Move enhancement bonus does stack with Barbarian’s increased movement
7. Anyone can disable a nonmagical traps if they are skilled in disable trap
8. Lunge Feat – additional reach only counts on your turn - doesnt threaten squares when its not your turn
9. Flat-footed/Dexless characters do not add Dex bonus to CMD
10. Reach weapons suffer soft cover penalties when attacking through people
11. Aid another only works if the aiding PC can meet the required DC the primary PC is performing
12. Aid another in combat only works for those that threaten the same opponent
keep in mind there are bonuses/penalties to perception that should be taken into consideration:
Perception is used to notice fine details in the
environment. The DC to notice such details varies depending
upon distance, the environment, and how noticeable the
detail is. The following table gives a number of guidelines.
Can I ask a perhaps obvious question? - besides the one I just asked...
what are the two boss guys doing in that room?
there’s no furniture...
there’s nothing to look at...
there's really nothing in there for them to do...
they are in that room the whole length and breadth of the party moving through the dungeon floor...
are they seriously just waiting for adventurers to come into their secret lair and attack them?
To be honest, I think this is something that has been struggled with since boxed module adventures have been released on store shelves.
I know theres a difference between the idea that the players may have peeked at the module prior, and when the map is being requested to be drawn out in front of the whole party to see.
In this situation, I typically, roleplay it into the adventure:
Someone is selling maps of the local abadoned cathedral that is now the dungeon crawl.
or
in the above situation, the earth elemental could come back and report 76 detected bodies of movement - as he was not requested to deferentiate between all sources, nor would the elemental have the intelligence to potentially count that high.
36 sewer rats
10 humans
2 other earth elementals doing the same thing
5 rabid stray animals
ect...
i would also ask if the character - summoner, druid, ect - has taken any special efforts or if they have dedicated skills to specialize in this type of 3 demensional navigational mapping skill.
do they have profession cartographer or craft maps or orienteering.
how many people do you know of that can successfully draw downtown and place all the landmarkers correctly?
incorporate some type of skill check or ability check for the person to successfully navigate or for them to have it drawn out.
another idea would be to take the spot light away from these individual players, and open it up to the whole party.
let the table do some information gathering or diplomacy to see if they can find someone to supply them a map. or find a long lost tome in the library that has details on the layout
make it a group effort, a mini quest in its own right.
no summoner archetypes? hmm..
if i would have known about this earlier, i would have submitted one.
in a nutshell:
"channeler"
exchange the spell-like ability to summon monsters with the ability to enhancing his eidolon with a limited amount of special qualities/attacks/defenses by channeling the essence of the creatures he typically could have summoned with the appropriate level.
similar to the mechanics of beast shape, where spell level dictates amount of bonus and sizes and what not, only it applies to the eidolon.
STATISTICS
Str 18, Dex 21, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 14
During Combat Na-Kraka attempts to grapple
the first visible opponent with its tentacles
before rushing out the 100' room into the flooded
antechamber. While still grappling his
opponent, the Sea Witch moves into
the water where he attempts to
drown grappled opponents. If
an enemy breaks a grapple,
the Sea Witch lets out an
ink cloud and proceeds
to use spells to wear
down opponents before
striking with melee attacks.
so, im trying to understand what the game developers either invisioned with this ability or what they might be seeing that i am missing that makes grab/grapple a viable combat sollution.
this is a thread about grappling special maneuver and what value does it actually provide.
take this scenario of a fight that looks at a creature with 3 natural attacks and the grab special ability.
with a full attack option, the creature begins the attacks adjacent to a PC.
1st attack hits, and is successful on starting the grapple.
2nd, and 3rd attack are now at -2 to hit due to grapple condition, and if the creature uses finesse, the attacks are at an additional -2 due to the dex loss for the grapple condition.
the subsequent grapple checks are not affected by the initial -2, due to grapple checks being unaffected, but the CMD for the PC to break free is 2 less, again due to the -4 to dex from the grapple condition.
there is the idea that a creature could take -20 to grapple without gaining the grapple condition, but that isnt really realistic against a standard PC.
next round
the monster has to spend a standard action to maintain the grapple or the PC is free, which then takes away any full attack option this monster would have, or the option for it to chose to attack anyone else, since it spent a standard action maintaining.
the creature also now has to decide if it wants to move or do damage.
as the grapple condition prevents normal movement. most likely the rest of the party has now moved to surround it, as the monster doesnt threaten any squares, they easily gain flanking bonuses.
which now provides the rest of the party a potential +4 to hit the monster due to dex loss and flanking.
if the creature decides to move, it can only move half its movement, and if it wishes to prevent AOO, it will need to tumble, again reducing movement by half.
if it tries to jump as part of its movement, is hasnt gained the running start, so all DCs for a jump distance are doubled.
also, keep in mind, that now the creature has to account for the additional weight of the PC, so an encumberance check would then need to be taken into an account, which could also reduce the jump check accordingly.
if the creature decides to pin the PC, it has to spend a standard action (which is part of the maintain grapple function) to move the grapple to a pin, but then it now loses its dex to AC for the surrounding PCs, and is still unable to move away.
if the creature gained the grapple through a bite, and also had a manufactured weapon, it would lose the ability to fight with a two handed weapon, due to the grapple condition's restriction of no 2handed actions.
ok. so, i just ran this adventure yesterday, and i have to ask:
what is the point on some of these encounters?
take the thugs in the alley as an example - tier 6-7.
4 4th level rogues
AC 17, and 37hps, +7 to hit.
the average 6th lvl pc will have have an ac of roughly 22 by this time of their carrier. not counting after the first round of any defensive spell casting such as shield.
that means these guys will hit roughly 25% of the time. with one attack per round, averaging 7pts of dmg with potential sneak attack, that is a really, really long fight for them.
i get they are rogues, and they rely on sneak attack, but look at the layout? there really is no room for flanking, and if they try to feint, they get an attack every other round??
the fact that these guys are equip'd with standard slings for ranged is a joke. why wouldnt these guys be standing on the rough tops raining down attacks with masterwork bows or slings at the party? set up a block on the alley way to contain the pc's?
and toughness. as a feat? for a marginal combat orientated rogue? really?
a better encounter would be to have the rogues with improved steal - snatch the bag that had the book, or have them set up to parry/disarm/sunder weapons.
now look at the party structure:
you take one level 6 melee guy that charges up, roughly base +10 to hit, 75% of the time, he will hit, and does an average of 10pts of dmg.
or one ranged fighter, of course they will have rapid shot, so 3 arrows later, and you have one less rogue.
this fight isn't a resource drain, its just a waste of time. the party looks at you, like why are we doing this, you as the dm, look at the fight like why am i wasting this time?
its encounters like this that make people say they arent challenged with society modules.
A grappled creature takes a –2 penalty
on all attack rolls and combat maneuver checks, except
those made to grapple or escape a grapple.
which means the second tentacle attack suffers -2, even if it is to attack the same PC that he has grappled.
also, while the cecaelia is grappled, he suffers -4 to his dex for having the grappled condition - not very appeasing for a monster surrounded by foes
however, the deadly part of this encounter comes after the second tentacle. which, if both the hit and the grapple check are successful, he can establish a pin in the first round. and now that PC is helpless:
Helpless: A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound,
sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely
at an opponent’s mercy.
which means next round, as a GM, i wouldnt try having this guy make a worthless attempt to get to the water, i would have him slay the PC.
As a full-round action, an enemy can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless foe.
one of the encounters provides higher statblock damage in Tier 3-4 than it does for Tier 6-7:** spoiler omitted **i'm assuming one or both of these are incorrect - maybe they were supposed to be reversed?
Edit: sorry, on further reading, this may be correct:
** spoiler omitted **
Cheers,
Stephen (DarkWhite)
the key point to notice, is that the lower tier is a flat 1 rounds worth of dmg.
the higher tier dmg lasts 3 rounds:
Trigger location; Duration 3 rounds; Reset none
Effect jets of freezing water (3d6 cold damage, DC 20 Reflex
save for half damage); multiple targets (all targets in the
antechamber)
have the summoner of your party call in some support:
earth elementals have tremor sense - plus they are immune to sneak dmg
giant spiders do too - and they can web, ensare, and grapple
giant bats have blindsense
take their advantage away with spells like:
blacklight - all but the cast can now see
cast your own deeper darkness - unless you are fighting darkfolk
cast improved invisibility
beast shape 2 gives you tremorsense
use tactics:
close the door and smoke the room till they die of suffocation
ready an action to grapple the next thing that attacks you
dropping classes and whole class selections half way through a campaign, after our characters were created, mini's were painted, and backgrounds were written up, is the whole reason my original gaming group broke up.
unholy water has a damage type - look at the spell that creates it.
Curse Water
School necromancy [evil];Level cleric 1
Casting Time 1 minute
Components V, S, M (5 lbs. of powdered silver worth 25 gp)
Range touch
Target flask of water touched
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw Will negates (object); Spell Resistance yes (object)
This spell imbues a flask (1 pint) of water with negative energy,
turning it into unholy water (see Chapter 6). Unholy water
damages good outsiders the way holy water damages undead and
evil outsiders.
Dysfunction
