Joex The Pale's page

@Tholomyes, I'd say no, myself. Anything that would so radically alter the water would disrupt the holy enchantment, imho.

@ lifeless, barring epic level magic, I can't think of a way to make such an awesome idea come to life. Talk with your GM about your idea and see if he's willing to create a quest to an ancient something-or-other that could create such an effect. If my players came to me with such a request, I'd be ecstatic and happy to help.

Soul-bound doll whirling dervish.

So, goblin ninja swarm was a success! The PCs did well against the goblins and the ninja was appropriately nasty from his perch on a nearby building Flurry-ing the NPC fighter. The party healer kept bringing him back up into the fight, which kept the ninja focused on taking down the fighter while the rest wiped out the goblins. Last round everyone focused fire on the ninja who decided that getting out of there might be a good thing. They almost took him down as well, but the crit the party rogue put on him last shot before ninja's turn turned out not to be one after all. ( She missed by one, which brought damage down just enough for him to limp away with 2hp.) Altogether, a tense and enjoyable battle. The party got pretty worried when there were still goblins joining the party after 4 rounds of combat, but they enjoyed smacking the little mooks around.

Thanks to everyone for the help designing this! Making me take a second look at it saved the party from a TPK.

Now the poisoner does something unique with poison and gets rid of their static DC (so they can still be effective at later levels).

I meant mechanically. Do the changes to the poisoning rules make him more deadly, or does it just make it feel better for the PC? Had it effected his combat performance at all?

In home games I let swift poison turn poisoning into a swift action and the poisoner, instead of gaining a +1 bonus (scaling) on saves vs. poison increases the DC of poisons he applies by 1 (scaling).

And how does that work out?

What about the flat cost enchantments? Could someone Glammer a +10 weapon?

Well, a wizard cannot scribe a spell into his spellbook until he has learned it, at which point he "knows" the spell. Whether or not he chose to memorize it that day, he still has access to it. And the victorious wizard only gets the spellbook if he can locate and retrieve it. ;-)

I FAQed it as well, although I would go with a more liberal interpretation myself. The spell states "any spell that spellcaster knew." For a memorization caster, this would clearly be any spell he was capable of memorizing that morning. I would, however, restrict it to casters of your "type"only. Just as a split class caster can't use slots from one class to cast spells from the other, you shouldn't be able to learn an arcane spell from a devine source. Doesn't work for scrolls, why should it work for this spell?

I'd go necklace of adaptation, fiery body, contingency(reverse gravity), fly, interplanetary teleport(x2), protective penumbra, and that aforementioned ring of dancing to top things off. Although protective penumbra may need to have an upgraded version researched...

Cast fly, protective penumbra and the contingency set to centre a reverse gravity on you as soon as local gravity exceeded twice normal. Then make sure your jewelry is in place, fire up the fiery body, teleport in and enjoy 20 minutes of sky dancing on the sun. Cool idea, I want to create a wizard with the ultimate goal of doing this now!

Peter Stewart wrote:

I think every DM has had this experience

I once ran an entire encounter with hostile Storm Giants... and forgot to give them their turns. :S

Don't ask, I have no excuse.

This gave me a much needed belly laugh! Thank you! :D

Alan_Beven wrote:

It's not meant to be "fun". It's meant to be a creature using its strengths to destroy its enemies.

sigh

Now, now. Don't quote him out of context. Yes, this sentence, could have been phrased better, but he explained his point properly in the rest of his post. Beating an improperly played monster is little different from finding a code bug in a video game to beat a powerful creature with no risk. The fun is in the accomplishment, not the gaining of the loot. After all, you could have that first kobold encounter at first level sitting on a Dragon hoard, but how fun would the rest of the a game be with +5 weapons and mighty magic staves in party hands? Might as well play the game on cheat codes!

The GM shouldn't bail, but use this as a learning experience and work to fix it. The paladin/wizard thing could work. Also, are the PC's *really* the most powerful band on the sea now? Slightly higher level and much smarter/stealthy pirates could easily steal the kraken sub from them and now they REALLY have a problem on their hands! Aquatic enemies could be deadly here, sahugin, merfolk, hell , this would be a feast for a large band of lacedons! And a powerful undead would LOVE such a mount/servant. For that matter, servants of a God of the dead, trickery or chaos could give it back it's mind...

Kill me once, shame on me. Reanimate me and use me as a boat, shame on you. Shame, and my everlasting enmity, mortal peons!

Didn't mean to jack your thread. ;-)

A chain of feats that makes the crossbow a viable ranged weapon compared to the bow. Right now the crossbow is out DPRed by the bow by a large margin and the crossbow has nothing to offer to compete against that. I am a fan of the flavor and image of the crossbow and would like to see something to glamour it up a bit, make people want to take it for other then flavor reasons.

Not sure how to improve on precise shot. I suppose a feat that improves on the attack bonus could work. Historically, they were preferred over bows for their ease of use compared to the skill needed to use a bow well. If they were easier to shoot, it makes sense to design a feat that capitalizes on that fact. But how to design it so it's not just a re-skinned Weapon Focus?

I do like the DR angle, since that was their other main draw; they could punch through armor very well. But aren't there already feats that specialize in bypassing DR? Clustered shots comes to mind and I'm sure there's another, although I might be thinking of a hardness bypassing feat instead...

Yes, but there's not a lot that are useful. Crossbow mastery it's going to be rendered moot by getting an Endless Ammunition enchantment put on it. He already has rapid, point blank and precise shot. What other feats are there that a crossbowman would find useful? More to the point, there are a few feats that are bows only and bows are generally accepted as the superior choice as far as DPR is concerned. I'd like something that puts crossbows back on par.

Now, I have a player using a repeating crossbow. I like both the weapon ands the image of unloading bolts like a Gatling gun, but there are woefully few feats that such a weapon could utilize. Interested in trying that field?

Battle is taking place in an open courtyard. Deeper Darkness has reduced light levels to Complete Darkness. (Forgot to mention that earlier.) That will likely be nullified on round two by the party druid though. And the rules on invisible ranged attackers is that the general area is identified, but attacker is not pinpointed. Since Drow ninja won't join the fight until the NPC fighter does, no surprise round.

So, the way the encounter is designed, no bottleneck and no easy way to locate the Drow. Hence, how does one find an invisible ranged attacker in 1-2 rounds without spellcaster support? (Party has almost no access to invisibility defeating magic, something I just discovered.)

I'm planning on reducing the ninja a few levels to get rid of the Invisible Blade and one Flurry of Stars attack, so he'll only dish out one sneak attack a round. That should balance the fight out enough, I'll run the numbers tonight after work.

I've looked at the rules and various items and it looks like there are few options for a fighter to locate and shut down an invisible attacker quickly.

I ran the scenario of Greater Invisibility ninja (+14 attack) vs fighter with 21 A.C. (adjusted) multiple times and fighter goes down round two 80% of the time, round one of all four attacks hit and damage is average.

So, here's the challenge: find an invisible ranged attacker as a human fighter 9th in one round. Attacker is using Shuriken, so is likely within 20'. Assume standard WBL for item purchases but no spellcaster support. Go!

I have a player in my group playing an Arminger. (Third party defensive tank class) His defensive abilities are amazing. The party turtles around him for tough fights and he can soak up amazing damage with 6-12hp/level (class ability). He was concerned about enemies dodging him and going after his squishy friends, so he commissioned a shield that can cast Compel Hostility on him, which is the closest thing he could find to an aggro ability. (We discussed Antagonize and I decided not to allow it.) He just got it, so he hasn't had a chance to play with it yet, but I'm envisioning much splattering goodness. He also took up the guisarme (another class ability allows shield and polearm use) and is negotiating with the party sorcerer to get him to learn Enlarge Person, or at least use a wand of it on him every battle. Thought I'd toss that in for consideration.

They look good. My comments would be as follows;

1) For Misfortune, isn't a fourth level spell for a feat with no level prerequisites kinda powerful?

2) I like Deception, but why restrict it to rogues only? I agree they would get more use out of it, but I don't see a need to remove it from others. Just curious if there was a rational I was missing.

3) Greed is just about perfect, I'd say. Good job!

Ooookay, ran a test encounter just with the Drow noble ninja 10 and the human fighter 9 (intimidate build) that is his target. Fighter goes down hard during second round. Ninja using Invisible Blade and Flurry of Stars ninja tricks. With fighter's +5 perception vs ninja's +25 stealth, fighter didn't even locate ninja, never mind close with him.

Yeah, maybe I need to dial this back a bit... :O

HA! Nice! One of them is an Oracle and will fit this very nicely! Excellent! Can I use more exclamation points? Indeed I can!

Yes, I was planning on only having half attack the first round. Of course, they will be focusing those attacks on only half the party...

Maybe I should run some sample rounds before unleashing this on them, eh?

BTW, what's the math on an encounter with three 7th level Drow and a CR6 undead? Because that's the encounter that leveled them to 5th and they pretty much cake walked it. I *did* miss a few tricks that would have made things more difficult for them, but they still walked away pretty much only lightly damaged from what I was thinking should have dropped at least 1-2 of them...

They worship Gromlin, the god of Bad Luck, Trickery, Greed and Lust (CE). (I run a homebrew setting)

They are currently kidnapping people in order to harvest their pain and then sacrifice them when they can take no more torture, using the magically condensed pain and sacrifices as components in the creation of magic items. The liquid pain also can be taken as a drug. (Concept taken from the 3.5 Book of Vile Darkness. LOVE that book!)

Fluff enough for ya? :)

I'm thinking of starting with 20 or so in the compound and adding more as needed. The Drow ninja has an Improved Invisibility on him, so the party is not likely to even see the Drow, much less attack him, but I take your point. The Drow will be very wary and retreat quickly if discovered and attacked by the whole group. After all, he's trained the goblins and knows what large group of weak creatures can do. ;-)

What about the Shuriken question, though? With his opponents flatfooted from the invisibility, will each of those little babies carry a 5d6 sneak attack punch? The way I read it, I think so, but I want to make sure I'm not misreading it. That seems awfully powerful...

BTW, am I correct in thinking that with Improved and Greater Feint, if he succeeds in feinting his flurry of Shuriken will all do sneak attack damage? That's a potential of 4d2+20d6 in a single round, if all four attacks hit...

I'm planning an encounter with a boat load of level 2 goblin ninja complete with alchemist fire and goblin skull bombs raiding a compound the PCs are in. Six PCs, level 5. Sorcerer, Fighter, Rogue, Druid, Inquisitor, Armiger.

Open with a fire bomb attack on the stable to draw them out, deeper darkness to flatfoot them, Gang Up feat on all the goblins to maximize sneak attacks. I want confusion, chaos and pain without a TPK. There will be a Drow ninja 10 leading them, but he will be engaged with taking down a NPC the party is with and won't bother the group unless they interfere. He'll be wielding Str poisoned Shuriken and built to feint for sneak attack flurries of Shuriken.

Is there anything I'm overlooking? The druid will have Daylight, which she will hopefully cast at some point to negate the deeper darkness. The goblins should be 1-2 hit mooks that I'm thinking the PCs will have a ball splatting all over the place. I'm a little worried about the skull bombs, 5d6 can add up quick, but I love the image so I'm going to try them in limited quantities.

Ideas, comments, recommendations?

I was looking at their feats, but they all seem themed to giving lesser Drow all the Drow noble abilities, as well as increasing their SR and such. Meh.

This is a splinter group that worships a god other then the spider queen and is in hiding as a result. No driders. That spark anything?

My party has made a recurring enemy of a band of Drow. Any feats for them in your repertoire?

Dotting. Man, I wish I had three more groups and the time to run games for them, I get so much game idea gold from these forums!

... 52 damage. The boss failed his fortitude save for the Tons'o'Damage check and died instantly.

I truly felt bad for my friend at the look on his face. All his plans, not just for the boss but for the entire castle... ruined! He never GMed again.

I had retooled the Kingmaker BBEG to a fair-thee-well, making said villain meaner and nastier than scripted. Opening spell by the PC sorceress against no SR was horrid wilting . Nat 1 on the Fort save, nat 1 vs. Massive Damage, campaign over on round 1.

Had a similar thing happen to me. Tricked out a fighter to be an awesome leader/tactician, first fight took 50+ damage on round one from a crit, flubbed the save and died.

I've refused to use that optional rule ever since.

Personally, I would rule that the pit would require a 10' square area of solid surface to manifest upon.

This would require some sort of mash-up of Pathfinder and a tabletop miniatures wargame. It would be interesting, but it would be a lot of work.

I totally agree, which is why I was wondering if anyone knew what the pricing formula was that they used. Although I don't think you were taking the "slotless" quality into account in your calculations. Still, they're so damn expensive, I don't see anyone using them.

I remember these! I based an order of the lawful neutral paladins in my home brew world. Glad to see an update, now I can stat them up again. Thanks! :)

First and foremost; it's Rogue. Rouge is face-paint.

Second, I'd swap your Con to either your Int or Cha, if you are playing a social based rogue. You either want more skill points, or you want the social based ones you have to be more effective, your call.

And always max out your skills, unless you're dipping into a "Trained Only" skill to just be able to use it. There are feats that would help this build, but I can't think of them off hand and it's late so I'm not looking for them. Perhaps tomorrow, if I have time before work.

Let's try this link thing again...

Link.

First off, I think you CAN build a MT that can stand up with a regular party. I'm playing one now, and while we are still early days of the campaign, he is an awesome buffer and his Summoned creatures last a full six rounds at first level!(W1+Specialist[Conjuration]+Magical Knack trait+Spell Specialization[SMI]=6rnds) Yes, he is missing a spell level over where he should be (Started at third level, C2/W1) but he is powerful in his own supportive way. If he has a minute to buff the party, we go in like Dreadnoughts. If not, we struggle the first couple rounds until we start getting our game faces on properly. He may not be as straight up powerful as a straight Summoner wizard, but he wasn't designed to be, nor will this guy be designed that way either. This sounds like a party that would be very much conducive to such a character, and he would be a powerful ally to their lower-powered melee capabilities.

Like I said, if you are at all interested in the Theurge, play it now; you'll never get a better chance. ;)

Ah.

So, you could cast Animate Objects on a carpet, then cast Invisibility on it, and spread some caltrops on top of it.

They would be invisible, as they are carried by the invisible creature.

To go one further, an animated rug's attack is a grapple/smother attack, no? Imagine getting grappled by a rug covered in pointy little metal bits...

I was looking at the Pathfinder SRD site and found these neat toys, one of which would be a cool fit for a BBEG I have. Here's a link.

Now looking at it, and at the other few examples listed, it had me thinking of creating a few more, perhaps even some cheap ones to put on minions. But I could find no formula. Anyone know how they come up with these costs?

LOVE this feat! I have a barbarian in one of my games that likes to fight with her rage claws, I'm going to recommend this to her when she hits 10th level! :)

I love how many threads get so many replies even though the OP hasn't yet made a 2nd appearance to give thoughts/feedback on the first replies...

He could be lurking on the edges soaking up our wisdom. ;)

I vote for the mystic theurge because when else would you have the chance?

+1 this.

This party is ideal for a Theurge, if you are at all interested in playing one. Some, like BBT above, don't care for them, but in their niche I think they can shine. And this is a niche if there ever was one! :)

I would rule same as Dimension Door, since it states that this is the power that Shift emulates. So, unless you have Dimensional Agility, you may not Shift and do anything else that turn. And you can't do anything else without disrupting a Summoning spell in any case.

I'm not at all familiar with psionics, so I can't help at all there, but I'll try to give some ideas.

First thing that comes to mind is sight. Short range teleportation is line of sight based, correct? Then blind him. Fog spells, darkness and straight up blindness, whichever is appropriate to the scenario.

If they have an intelligent enemy/BBEG, there's no reason that they won't catch on to his favorite trick and start equipping their mooks and henchmen with ways to shut him down. If there's any way for word to get back to the enemy/BBEG, have them react appropriately. It's only cheating if there's no rational explanation for it, and it doesn't need to occur every encounter.

Turn it against him. Nothing like having your favorite deadly trick used by your enemies against YOU! Does he seriously think he's the first uber-mobile badass out there? There's all sorts of short range teleportation spells and items, or even just crazy mobile characters. (Fast monk with a quick runners shirt and boots of speed. ZOOM!) Have him come up against someone using the same trick in a different way, see how he likes it!

Joex The Pale wrote:

Dotted. Shuriken idea is gold. And I have a Quick Runner's Shirt on my Mage. It's not just for melee types. Double move withdraw action followed by a spell in the face of your attacker,anyone? Sure beats a five foot step!

Err... that doesn't actually work.

Oh, crap. Yeah, just reread the rules and noticed the full-round action part of the description. Oops. (How can you tell people don't retreat often in our games? ;-) )

Well, it's still damn cool. I can run away and still have an action left when I stop. :-P

*edit * Now I need to get a pair of Daredevil Boots or Jaunt Boots... :-$

Do you happen to have a build that replicates Scorpion from Mortal Kombat? I'm having a little trouble coming up with a reliable "Get over here" attack for him myself so I figured I'd ask.

First thing that came to mind was a whip and a reposition attack.

Dotted. Shuriken idea is gold. And I have a Quick Runner's Shirt on my Mage. It's not just for melee types. Double move withdraw action followed by a spell in the face of your attacker,anyone? Sure beats a five foot step!

I hate the HD change, bump it up 1 or two but don't scale it.

Why? What would be so bad with it scaling? The DC wouldn't make it terribly useful at highest levels, unless the creature was already massively de-buffed or has horrendous saves. Don't just say no, give us a reason.

On a successful save the target is staggered instead, unless he passes another save at the same DC.

Edit: a lvl2 spell that auto staggers is broken.

Perhaps, although there are other spells at this level that have limiting effects with no save. Web, comes to mind. There's a save vs. the grappled condition, but the terrain modifier has no safe component, is potentially just as limiting as staggered and is AOE to boot. So I wouldn't say a 1 round auto-stagger is that bad. What makes you cry broken?

I was recently reading a post where Daze Monster was justifiably being dumped on by everyone. I think the consensus is pretty much unanimous that the spell as it stands sucks donkey nads, to be indelicate about it. So, how do we fix it?

Spell as it stands is level two and dazes a creature for one round, done. OK, that's pretty underpowered. What about adding duration to it? We could extend the dazing effect to 1 round/two levels. Or having the daze effect stay one round duration, but have the spell itself last one round per level and the caster can use the effect every round as a move or standard action.

Do these modifications help to make this a spell worth having in a repertoire? If not, how would YOU fix it? Let's get some discussion happening and fix the problem, shall we?

I was looking at the feat Sacred Summons, which looks really cool at first blush. But then I took a peek at the summoning lists to find that there are zero creatures that exactly match my gods alignment of Lawful Neutral. So, my question is this; what's stopping me from just adding/swapping creatures into the lists? I imagine there is some sort of balance issue that was taken into account when the lists were created, but shouldn't adding creatures be a case of straight up CR balancing?

As a related topic, I recall reading in Dragon Magazine (I think) a variant to the summoning rules where a summoner created a custom list by researching and contacting specific individual outsiders whom he forged agreements with and could then summon to his aid. There were mechanics involved, but they are long lost from my memory. The disadvantage is a greatly reduced list from which one could summon creatures, since the process was rather involved, so you didn't have the 6-12 choices, but more like 2-3 choices, depending on how vigorously you pursued populating your summoning lists. The advantage was that you summoned that PRECISE individual, so if you could Call them instead occasionally, you could then gift them with items that would increase their power and versatility. I think there was also a mechanic to either "level" them with you or add new ones as you went.

So, with all of the above in mind, this is what I was thinking. I wish to have my character make peaceful contact with a LN outsider, likely an Azer, since they seem to be the ones that most closely fit with my character's outlook. I was thinking of researching and arranging a "meeting" with an Azer noble or similar powerful individual of that race and arrange for the periodic "borrowing" of some of his vassals on an ongoing basis. As I became more powerful, I would return to update the agreement to contract more powerful vassals to fill roles in my higher level Monster Summoning lists.

Advice, similar experiences and/or resources are all welcome in this.