Illithar's page

I have played under dms that did not use grids, used dry erase flip mats, custom made flips, and others. Most recently my group has been playing on large lego boards. We've drawn lines every 3 dots and the spacing works perfectly. It is also very fun to put together a lego mini of a character. What sort of different ways do you represent the battle scene?

I haven't had to use my own battle mat in some time, but I own two non-flip battle mats with 1" squares on them, one large one small. Where I currently game frequently we have a mat completely covering a poker table that also uses 1" squares. It's also nice because the mat more than covers the entire table, so the whole thing can be used a writing surface for players and the DM.

I'd like to get a dry-erase system but I haven't found that I like just yet.

One of my favorite words is 'Sanguine'

"Sanguine, hopeful, plus point of interest, it also means bloody..."
"Well, that pretty much covers all options doesn't it."

A word I encountered recently that gave me pause is 'maladroit' which is apparently a synonym of clumsy. More specifically, doing something in an inept manner.

Please cancel my rpg subscription, just can't afford it for the time being.

Illithar, it looks like your order shipped out yesterday by US Priority Mail.

Cool! thanks you!

I was wondering if this order has shipped yet or not? The status has said 'shipping' on my order history, but if I focus on the order it says it has shipped. Just wondering where it's at.

Actually creatures can provide cover:

Soft Cover: Creatures, even your enemies, can provide

you with cover against ranged attacks, giving you a +4
bonus to AC. However, such soft cover provides no bonus
on Reflex saves, nor does soft cover allow you to make a
Stealth check.

So, technically, you don't get a penalty, they get bonus AC.

Use of a battlemat varies from by play style and I would also say by game system. When playing 3.x/PF I prefer to use the battle mat. We roll it out at the beginning of the session and if there's combat, great, if not oh well. About the only I would use it would be in combat, not to draw every little detail. Or some DM's may use it to sketch something for the players. I've seen it used many different ways.

However, some game systems simply don't work well with a battle mat. Mutants and Masterminds, while usable with a grid, if you have the right kind of characters it gets sort of... pointless. When you move action gets you to the moon or from New York to Moscow and then to Miami all while making a cup of coffee, the battle mat just isn't helping.

Outside of that I have never had the battle mat detract from my immersion into the given game or combat. If any thing it has helped, I tend to appreciate the fact that I am surrounded more when I can both see it and hear it described by the DM.

NOW all that said, this isn't to say that I would not enjoy a game that did not involve the use of maps. Most of my experience has been with that type of game. 3.x has been the reigning champion of games systems in my area since it's release for the most part and everyone I am aware of uses the grid.

The conversation I've seen seems to boil down to that. Most people seem to favor the style they have the most prior experience with. Which is not a bad thing, doing the opposite method would push them out of their comfort zone (one way or another).

I felt like I've rambled enough now...

pres man wrote:

Dragonborn3 wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

doll

Miniature.

Action figure!

Graphic representation.

Humanoid Polymer Approximation.

EDIT: or Humanoid Pewter Approximation.

Are you guys planning on doing a pdf of those products?

Crafty Games does PDF's of all of the products I believe. At least there are for their Fantasy Craft ones, I have PDF's of the core book as well as the Adventure Companion.

As far as Paizo offering them on their store here I could say. I got mine at RPGnow.com

The campaign setting provides a feat for having Vermin Animal Companions. Is there anywhere that someone has vermin companions written up for PFRPG companion format? The original feat is 3.5, but there is a PFRPG module that has a Bee Companion with one of the NPCs

This may not help you right now, but Ultimate Magic is supposed to have rules for vermin companions in it.

The one epic level character I have ever played started at 20 level. But, all of the other characters in the group started at 1st, I joined in later. My character is now 41st level the rest a a couple above me. There are other PC's in the same game world that I believe are in the 60s. One of them actually had a divine rank at one time.

The DM that runs this world is all sorts of excited about updating all of the characters to Pathfinder. Me? I'm sort of 'meh' on it. My epic level character didn't really excite me anymore than some of my 10th and lower characters did. Granted, he did some WILD stuff and had some fun powers, but it honestly felt like I was playing a super-hero character, not a fantasy character.

I have a fighter with combat reflexes. I ready an action for the first creature to come within my reach using the brace option of the weapon. If this creature charges, I'm thinking I get two attacks. One for the brace that is a readied action and one for an opportunity attack for going through my reach. Is this how it works, or does it work differently?

As for the rest of the creatures, I get an attack of opportunity foe each point of dex I have for each creature that comes across my threatened reach. Is this correct?

Looks that way, one attack for the readied action, and a second for it provoking an attack of opportunity for passing through your threatened area.

Illithar wrote:

Not sure if this has been addressed or if it's really errata but I notice that the Sorcerer Protean Bloodline gains immunity to Polymorph at 20th level. Their bonus spells at 15th and 19th level are Greater Polymorph and Shapechange respectively. So, the final ability invalidates two spells that the sorcerer gains for free since they would be immune to them.

It also seems somewhat odd that a being that is an 'Avatar of Chaos' can't change shape...

I probably should have described it as a selective immunity, as in "may choose to ignore any polymorph effect used against them."

They change shape whenever *THEY* want to.

I figured that that was the likely the intent, hopefully some errata will clear it up.

Not sure if this has been addressed or if it's really errata but I notice that the Sorcerer Protean Bloodline gains immunity to Polymorph at 20th level. Their bonus spells at 15th and 19th level are Greater Polymorph and Shapechange respectively. So, the final ability invalidates two spells that the sorcerer gains for free since they would be immune to them.

It also seems somewhat odd that a being that is an 'Avatar of Chaos' can't change shape...

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Katanas are weak. Chainsaw swords FTW!

Nonsense. Katanas are the strongest and best sword ever made, able to cut straight through concrete and/or a wall of force. Chainsaws are for kittens.

Chainsaw-Kitana's Dual Wielded by WearKitten Space Marines with Jet Packs

MundinIronHand wrote:

Jason Nelson wrote:

MundinIronHand wrote:

Ice Titan wrote:

I've never been enamored with Extra Lay on Hands, but it does have its uses... one of which is that you can never be tempted to channel on your party with the extra LoHs from the feat, since you can't. It's good to be greedy sometimes.

be greedy, play an alchemist, keep all your healing and spells to yourself :)

That's what my alchemist does in our Serpent's Skull game. Sips on endure elements pina coladas while the rest of the schlubs in the party are sweating in the heat of Smuggler's Shiv. :)

[steal pina colada flavored extracts]

She also likes "gettin' caught in the rain" :)

I only drink the blood of my enemies!

...and the occasional strawberry yoohoo...

...grenadine, straight from the can!

EDIT: Kudos to whom ever gets the reference.

Conductive: A conductive weapon is able to channel the energy of a spell-like or supernatural ability that relies on a melee or ranged touch attack to hit its target (such as from a cleric’s domain granted power, sorcerer’s bloodline power, oracle’s mystery revelation, or wizard’s arcane school power). When the wielder makes a successful attack of the appropriate type, he may choose to expend two uses of his magical ability to channel it through the weapon to the struck opponent, who takes the effects of the weapon attack and the special ability. (If the wielder has unlimited uses of a special ability, he may channel through the weapon every round.) For example, a paladin who strikes an undead opponent with her conductive greatsword can expend two uses of lay on hands ability (a supernatural melee touch attack) to deal greatsword damage and damage from one use of her lay on hands. This weapon property can only be used once per round, and only works with magical abilities of the same type as the weapon (melee or ranged).

Moderate necromancy; CL 8th; Craft Magic Arms and
Armor, spectral hand; Price +1 bonus.

Question #1 Do I need on different +1 for each power that I am try use thourgh the weapon?

Question #2 Is the extra damage Multplied on a crittical or is like persion dice and not.

Question #3 Why does it take 2 use not 1 to power it. I mean Chanle Smite Feat only use one use. ( Feat = to a +1 weapon uppgrade)

1: By the wording I don't think so, when it refers to 'type' I think it's means melee or ranged, not what class ability. So if you have a Conductive dagger and you opt to throw it you can have it deliver a lay on hands to an undead, since lay on hands is a melee touch attack. If you stab with the dagger though then you could. That's the way I read it anyway...

2: I wouldn't think so, additional dice typically are not unless stated other wise.

3: You can use the ability after a successful attack, you don't use the ability before attacking. With channel smith, you have expended the channel per day even if you miss. EDIT: Plus, with the weapon, anyone with the abilities can do it, even without the feat.

Here's a question, could a Paladin or Cleric use this and Channel Smite in the same round? I think so...

Kyle Baird wrote:

CapeCodRPGer wrote:

I got to look at a friends PDF copy of the APG today. Can I assume the new rules in the rules chapter are all optional? There are some I don't care to put into my game.

FYI the New Rules are simply four new combat maneuvers.

There's also Hero Point shtuff.

And traits.

I enjoy puzzles in games, they do help break up a pattern, but they do have their place. I remember a game back in high school where we had a riddle to open the door: "I am at the beginning of every end and the end of every life." I kid you not it took us 2 hours to figure the thing out. On player finally guessed it and another player hit himself with his PHB so hard it actually bent both covers and the spine (he's was/is a little...odd).

I personally enjoy physical puzzles, move statue A to square B then point statue C at Statue A. There was one in a Dungeon Crawl classic that was like that where we had to turn the statues heads in a specific way to open something (I don't remember the details).

I know on most puzzles the DM at least allowed us to use the applicable Knowledge skills to get clues, but not the direct answer.

I would say to many puzzles in a game, especially with the wrong group, can certainly ruin things.

Is it sad the the thing I was most excited about when reading this were the vermin companions?

Edit: OOOO! more about crafting golems!

Edit 2: I hope this means we will be getting an 'Ultimate Combat' book of some kind :D

I want to be sure these two things interact the way I think they do. Far shot reduces the penalty per range increment to a -1. The Sniper Archetype at first level reduces the penalty by half.

So, for the second range increment the sniper has no penalty: -1 halved (round down) = 0

For the third increment it is a -1 penalty: -2 halved (round down) = -1

For the fourth it would still be a -1: -3 halved (round down) = -1

Is this right? I assume the round down part since that is usually SOP.

Infusion is still a discovery. If you want it at level 1 you can spend a feat to gain it.

True Mutagen grants an alchemical bonus to stats now.

Wouldn't you still need to wait until 2nd level to take it since the feat has the prerequisite of the 'Discovery' class feature and you don't have that until 2nd level?

Page 102, the Urban Druid Lorekeeper ability. It says that the druid adds the skills, it does not say to what. I assume it means to the druids class skills but it looks like the sentence was cut off.

Elemental Spell (Metamagic)
You can manipulate the elemental nature of your spells.

Benefit: Choose one energy type: acid, cold, electricity, or fire. You may replace a spell’s normal damage with that energy type or split the spell’s damage, so that half is of that energy type and half is of its normal type. An elemental spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell’s actual level.

Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time you must choose a different energy type.

Emphasis mine.

The feat does not specify if the original spell had an energy type for damage.

Can you use the Elemental Spell feat on spells that do untyped damage?

If so, what would happen if you used it on a Inflict Light Wounds (or greater) spell? Would it still heal undead, or would it not because it is no longer negative energy but something else (Fire for example).

Also, Searing Light, would it still do it's extra damage to undead and light sensitive creatures?

Does a Witch maintain the lower level abilities of the Flight Hex as she gains levels? i.e. does a 5th level Witch have the ability to Feather Fall at will, have a +4 to swim checks, the ability to cast Levitate 1/day, and the the minutes of the Fly spell?

I'm guess they do but I want to be certain as I am sure this question will come up at some point.

You're also forgetting that Summoners literally have a giant neon sign on their forehead.

Wear a Headband/Hat?

Wow... a little melodramatic?

I don't have the book but here is what I know:

You can either have your Eidolon or use your Summoning SLA not both at the same time.

Summoning takes 1 minute but you can summon as many times/ day as you want.

Summoners get early entry on many spells, haste, dimension door, black tentacles.

Eidolon cannot stick around when the summoner is asleep or unconscious.

Correct.

As I said in the other thread losing the Eidolon when the Summoner is asleep/unconscious seems like a little much. But, the more I thought about it, it is made up for by the standard action SLA and the Summon Eidolon spell at second level.

Parties caught camped with only one or (maybe) two members awake are always at a disadvantage. Warrior types may not always be in their armor, and casters lack spells from the previous day. They may also have damage that has not been healed yet due to lack of spells/rest. per day based abilities are also slightly diminish.

I guess the vulnerability I see with the Eidolon vanish is sleep spells and effects can be used to deal with the Eidolon indirectly. But, this may only be a huge problem at lower levels.

I can see the Eidolon poofing when the Summoner dies, but unconscious/asleep is a little much. One failed save against a sleep effect and POOF! Gone for the combat...

GLEE! Tell Ross is awesome, and great, and also awesome!

The common theme seems to be that people with both AP and RPG subscriptions are getting theirs fulfilled. Hopefully tomorrow will be RPG only day :-(

Yeah, thats what it's looking like... *sigh*

So... I take it that if I don't have mine by now, I won't be getting it tonight, at all?

/big baby doe eyes

During the Bestiary release I got my notification to download the PDF at about 5ish my time, so about 6 I believe for the Paizo offices.

Nope. The actual order we process in is designed specifically to be as inscrutable as possible.** spoiler omitted **

Randomized?

Hmmm... I don't see the 'pre-order' anymore, but it still shows as pending...

Well its monday anyone got the email yet?

If they have they aren't speaking up.

Vic did state that shipping of APG (and thus enabling PDFs) begins on Monday. Patience, grasshopper. :)

Awesome, there ya go :)

and Happy Early Birthday to Joey.

The title says it all im checking my email like every hour to see if I have gotten my second email saying that its shipped and I can download my PDF

I don't believe anyone has, as much as I'd love to have it to look at over the weekend, we probably wont see anything until Monday at the earliest.

WOO! Got my e-mail and there's a pre-note on my account... Maybe tomorrow then?

Me too !!! Yay !!!

evilash wrote:

Oh, yes... just got my "next week or so" mail...

Hopefully we'll start seeing them ship Monday! please oh please Monday!

I'm really eager to see the new Monk archetypes, specifically the Ki Mystic and the Weapon Adept, hopefully something that makes Monk weapons more appealing to use.

It looks like you can use more than one archetype at a time. As long as they don't replace or alter the same abilities you could have as many as you want. That's unexpected and pretty cool.

By RAW I don't believe so, the ability says that you use the Perform Skills bonus in place of the appropriate skill bonus. The Halfling racial ability and boots add to the Acrobatics skill bonus, not the Perform.

That said I, don't see any issue with allowing those bonuses to add when using versatile performance as a houserule.

I'd like to see a deeper 'masterwork' system for weapons and armor. Things like additional add-ons and such that cost more but give you a mundane (i.e. non-magical) bonus to different skills/maneuvers. Definitely would love to see new things outside of just feats, more is fine but it's nice see new things. More weapon tricks like from the adventurers armory would be really cool too.

Everything else looks really cool too, the idea of differentiating weapons types/styles would be neat. As well as new/optional rules for armor as DR and action heroics.

I guess I would just like more sword in my Sword & Sorcery.

"OCH! Aye'm a DWARF! I drink beeeeeeerrh and speak in a bad Scah-ish ax-ent!"

Really? This is great roleplaying? That's just...sad. Everytime someone rolls a dwarf, I roll my eyes, knowing that I'm in for some crappy acting.

Ya know, I don't think I've ever played a character, of any race or creed, that had an accent that wasn'tbad. I just can't really do good accents, but I do them anyway, 'cause it's fun.

The last dwarf I played was just gruff sounding though, didn't bother with the accent.

During tonight's game session, one of my players used a rather deadly combination of Power Attack/Cleave in the same round.

After the session ended, one of the other players expressed doubts about the legality of using two feats in one round.

I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know the answer to that question. As per the RAW, is it possible to use Power Attack and Cleave in the same round or are characters limited to one feat in a round?

You may use any number of feats in a round. Unless, I would guess, two feats require using an action to gain their benefits, Vital Strike and Cleave for example. You could Vital Strike and Power Attack or Cleave and Power Attack at the same time however.

EDIT: Ninja'd

All casters must spend 1 hour to prepare their spells. What happens if a character is multi-classed with 2 casting classes and need to prepare their spells at the same time? For example: a wizard 1/cleric 2 prepares spells his spells in the morning, does he need to spend 2 hours preparing spells (1 for each class) or can he use one hour to prepare for both classes.

The GM ruled the use of a skill check, spellcraft DC 10 + cumulative caster level.

The rules don't seem to say much either way.

Illithar wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

I have a 15th-level summoner whose eidolon has focused a great deal on its tail attack. Due to its huge size, Improved Natural Attack feat, and Improved Damage evolution, it's tail attack normally deals 4d6 base damage.

However, when trying to determine what the damage would become when I cast Enlarge Person on the eidolon, I am suddenly at a loss, as the natural weapon damage table (or even the manufactured weapon table) doesn't go that high.

So, what does 4d6 damage become at the next step?

Unless I'm mistaken I don't believe that the eidolon can be targeted by Enlarge Person, as it has a target of one humanoid and the eidolon is an outsider I believe.

The share spell ability allows the eidolon to be affected if the spell is cast by the summoner.

Woop, completely overlooked that...

I have a 15th-level summoner whose eidolon has focused a great deal on its tail attack. Due to its huge size, Improved Natural Attack feat, and Improved Damage evolution, it's tail attack normally deals 4d6 base damage.

However, when trying to determine what the damage would become when I cast Enlarge Person on the eidolon, I am suddenly at a loss, as the natural weapon damage table (or even the manufactured weapon table) doesn't go that high.

So, what does 4d6 damage become at the next step?

Unless I'm mistaken I don't believe that the eidolon can be targeted by Enlarge Person, as it has a target of one humanoid and the eidolon is an outsider I believe.

*LOL* oh my... I guess the poll was right. Poor Lem on page 67.

That actually startled me a little the first time I came upon it. I also felt a little sad...

Just stumbled upon the 'Words Every GM Should Know' and uh... yeah 759 of them. Just scanning over it there a few I don't recognize. But thats really cool, I like adding new words to my vocabulary.