LadyBriar's page

Sylph Shaman.

My players ran through the Flat on Rat Street encounter last session, and there are no notes about areas A4-A7 in my book, not even in quick reference, and certainly no description... What on earth happened and what should I do about these areas?

Actually you can't use an antimagic field to dispel a fused Eidolon. It specifically states that the Summoner counts as BOTH itself and its Eidolon for the purpose of anti magic, dispel, etcetera, and that the Eidolon can't be targeted separately from the Summoner.

Also, because the Eidolon's stats are not temporary, the 24 hours thing is irrelevant. Its not a buff, its a REPLACEMENT. The stats never count as temporary in the first place. So yes, you CAN qualify for feats using the Eidolon.

That said, I completely agree that its overpowered, and I would force players into a 10-point buy with this archetype. Hopefully its one of the things that gets tweaked in the Pathfinder revamp next year.

As the subject says, I ordered the six Second Darkness books, and today when I went to get the PDF I realized I don't have access to it. I have PDF access for all the other books I purchased, so not sure what happened in this instance, but I really need that PDF.

Also, the books are 5 dollars each, and the PDF is a whopping 14 dollars. There's clearly a mistake when your digital copy is nearly 3 times the cost of the physical book, there's no way 14 dollars for a PDF is right, anyway just wanted to let you know about that part.

Thanks.

I had a GM who, after two of my characters died or were moved from active play, ruled that when rolling a character after level 1, you only got half the level appropriate gold. I made an Oracle with craft wondrous item, and came back with a beastly build and items so he had a hissy fit about it and changed the rules around.

I'm a GM now, and while I do make adjustments sometimes, I always talk it out with my players and get their feedback.

Having this same issue, and the weapon is the first item on the character, so there's no issues from weight or shields.

@Orich Starkhart - Can you explain "margin of success bonus"?

@Vamptastic - None of my players use sunder or anything like that right now, and I was actually hoping to encourage them to do so. We're playing Kingmaker, and so they're going to have to start learning tactics sooner or later.

@Eridan - Giving out free feats isn't going to balance anything. The issue here is most of them are already too strong. We have a Werebear in the group, and he's level 3 wandering around with natural 10 DR/Cold Iron

I'll reply in more detail after some research, but just wanted to quickly say: I don't allow guns.

So recently I decided to try and use the variant rules of armor as DR and the wounds and vigor rules. The wounds and vigor was interesting, and went smoother once I myself understood it better... but the armor as DR proved to be polarizing for my players. Some of my group loved it, since it meant it was easier to hit the intended targets, but some of them, despite hitting the target, couldn't do enough damage to overcome the creature's DR and thus were more than a little upset about the whole thing. At the same time, this was a CR 3 encounter, and the creature had 7 natural armor, thus giving it DR 7. For such a low level, that does seem to be inordinately high. I'm not sure if I'm doing the math wrong, somehow, or what... but he also struggled to damage a much lower DR creature as well. He's a ranged paladin (I know, I know) and so he doesn't really do much damage in the first place. He's mostly dex based, and his bow does 1d8+2, so minimum damage is 3, and max is 10. Now, with the default system, his high dex helps him hit, but with the armor as DR it seems that you need less dex to be effective. If I do decide to switch to this system, I'm wondering if I should allow him to reallocate his ability score points... Thoughts? Advice? My other players seemed to really love the changes, and since two of them have natural DR in the default system, I thought it might level the playing field for my poor creatures. As it is, the group tends to shred everything I send at them unless I hit them with something that can nearly TPK everyone but the one character.

When will this be back in stock?

Also, Atomie's have built in sneak attack, so that is where they get their damage from.

The "throw splash weapon" special attack is different from the "preparing to throw splash weapon" action.

The "preparing to throw" is referring to something like a flask of oil, which requires a full round to insert a fuse or wick, light it, and then throw it.

Something like alchemist's fire, which is intended to be a splash weapon to begin with, requires no preparation and is simply drawn and thrown. An alchemist's bombs work the same way.

It states "Drawing the components of, creating, and throwing a bomb" all happens in a single turn. Holy hell that's insane. He can MAKE a bomb, light it, and throw it, in 6 seconds? That just sounds off to me.

throwing a bomb is a standard action. Once he hita 8 he can take fast bombs and do more than one a round

that said just keep enemies spread out. A little energy resist goes a long way and you run out of bombs quickly

also you didn't mention this but remember that a crit w a bomb only adds another 1d6 of damage plus int

Unfortunately you can't always keep enemies apart, OR, they're too stupid to use tactics. At level 5, it just feels like a LOT of damage. Then again, he's squish as hell.

Also a CR appropriate encounter isn't really meant to be that hard, it's basically a random encounter. I have to wonder who the other party members are who can't handle a little more of a challenge.

But yeah, they're doing bombs exactly right, so no issues there.

They shred CR appropriate encounters. Its literally just free exp. I'm not trying to kill them every fight, mind you, but I'd like it to be a little more hair raising than "You are ambushed by 8 undead skeletons!" Two rounds later, "And they're all dead..."

Actually, the "prepare a splash weapon" action is for flasks of oil, not splash weapons such as alchemist's fire or acid. In other words, you can just chuck an alchemist's fire at the enemy without any prep work, but for the flask of oil to be effective, you have to rig it up to catch fire once it breaks.

As to the bomb's damage itself, the base damage is the same as a rogue's sneak attack, but without a weapon damage die on top, so they're not any more damaging than a good rogue who can reliably flank, and he has a limited number he can do per day (level plus Int mod). The only thing the bombs have over sneak attack (and bomb discoveries don't count, as the rogue gets rogue tricks for their sneak attacks) is the splash damage, which is the MINIMUM of the damage their bombs do (ie, a bomb that does 2d6+4 damage would do 6 splash damage, reflex for half).

If your players are trashing your encounters simply by virtue of having a barbarian and an alchemist, the players are NOT the problem, it's your encounters. There's more that can be done to make the encounters more challenging than simply upping the CR; look at what KINDS of threats you're throwing at them. If you're using typical meat-grinder encounters, yeah, those two are going to chew things up, but if you start throwing in terrain/lighting/whatever to hamper them, and spellcasters to capitalize on poor save bonuses, they'll have a LOT more problems. If the alchemist himself is chewing up more of the encounters than the barbarian, start throwing things with fire resistance at him.

For the first part, please read up. I still feel that 6 seconds is an unrealistic time to get components, make, and throw a bomb.

It isn't even the damage that bothers me as much as the fact that he NEVER has to worry about hitting allies. It takes away from the tactical side of things when he can just throw bombs wildly.

Also the random encounters were based on the module, so they're not MY encounters, per say. I did feel a lot better later on when they ran in to fire elementals and the alchemist was useless, but at the same time it sucks when your character can't do ANYTHING in a fight. (Been there.) I'm trying to understand, and work things out, so that everyone is having fun.

Yeah, he's correct. Splash weapon rules apply to things like crits (or the fact that splash weapons don't crit) and misses to determine where the splash weapon actually lands. If you up the CR, and your players are instantly dying, I can't help but think you're doing CRs wrong, or upping it by way too much. Upping the CR by 1 or 2 against a party that's steamrolling through every encounter shouldn't cause a wipe.

If you want to know how to make it harder, use tactics. Have your creatures spread out, use creatures or NPC enemies that make use of ranged tactics (a bomb can only be thrown 5 range increments, so that's a max of 100 feet) or even add some spellcasters in there. Find creatures that fit the CR you're looking for that have some energy resist, or energy immunities. Dretch are a good example. CR2 and resist acid/fire/cold 10. Along with the stinking cloud they can use as battlefield control, a small number of dretch can make for a very hard encounter.

As for your Barbarian... Barbarians do one thing well. They hit stuff. They hit stuff hard.

You want to challenge your players? Come up with better places for battles. Have enemies who use tactics just like your players do. Start off NPCs in advantageous positions. Make use of traps and ambushes.

Oh, also, what character creation rules are you using? Because keep in mind, book CR encounters are designed around groups that are using 15 point buy, and only have 4-5 players. If you upped the point buy at all, or have a larger group, then you need to edit the CR accordingly.

They're steamrolling through sheer damage. They have no tank, and can't take a hit. So either my monsters don't live long enough to get close, or THEY don't survive the fight at all. And its a LOT of undead, who aren't smart enough to use tactics. They're mindless with no int score. I play them that way, as its only fair. They target the nearest enemy and hit it til one side dies. Again, its probably more the module being s!!~tily written than anything. I've been hearing from other DM friends that it's pretty bad.

LadyBriar wrote:

almost no consequences to the party.

Also, remember that precise bombs does not apply on a miss, and eventually he will miss and land in the middle of the party.

Yeah everyone forgot about the miss rules. And when I read them again, and used them, the whole party had a s!%* fit about it. It was a long discussion explaining how they worked. But, it was nice to actually have a consequence.

Doggan wrote:

Oh, also, what character creation rules are you using? Because keep in mind, book CR encounters are designed around groups that are using 15 point buy, and only have 4-5 players. If you upped the point buy at all, or have a larger group, then you need to edit the CR accordingly.

Also, number of encounters per day matters. If the party can rest after each fight, they can "go nova" and use all their best abilities, rather than needing to conserve them for later fights. That significantly ups their power.

I made both these mistakes with my Kingmaker group - really high stat buy (technically it was generated stat arrays, but they were really good ones), and Kingmaker does the one-fight-per-day by default. I countered by upping all the fights in some way.

4 players, 15 point buy, level 5 and 6. They are the appropriate sized group, and level, for the module. Luckily, the module is over, AND we're going to start Kingmaker. Woo!

LadyBriar wrote:

Between the free precise bomb and the sheer damage output he's dealing, even with the level appropriate CR encounters, he and the barbarian are ending my encounters in a few rounds if I'm lucky with almost no consequences to the party.

What I don't understand is, why is this a problem? Do you want to beat them? That's not really a healthy attitude for a GM to have. If they're having fun, them winning sounds like a fine outcome to me.

No, I want it to not be like walking through tissue paper. I hate handing over exp for nothing. The whole point is to earn it.

I think you should go take a look at what other classes are doing at the same level. I think you will find that he is pretty average. (It sounds like he is level 5, so about this point the wizard is getting his fireballs.)

He's out damaging the Barbarian, who is pretty peeved about it. Lmao.

It sounds like he's using his character class properly, sorry. Infact he might be giving you a break by not using alchemical weapons and the grenadier ability to strap them to arrows. That particular combination can get quite crazy.

However, if you're seeking solutions there is a fairly simple one. Bombs are a finite resource, the alchemist only gets so many each day. So a simple solution would be to increase the number of encounters per day and force the alchemist to consider limiting his bomb use a little.

Yeah I didn't know he had so many bombs per day. That was a relief. I also found out he hadn't been tracking them, so I came down on that.

You are actually really lucky he IS using bombs and he didn't go Vivisectionist melee on you!

He had just played, and gotten killed, as a rogue. I think he specifically wanted range, and he thinks the bombs are fun.

Absolutely. Darkness and deeper darkness can create an area of darkness even in direct sunlight. http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/additionalRules.html#vision-and-light That might also help. :)

However, illusions will not. The illusions only fool a creature's vision, it doesn't stop the light from hitting the caster in the first place.

Oh, and before anyone says, "Up the CR" the second I do that the entire party dies. So, I'm stuck.

One of my players has rolled up a Grenadier archetype for Alchemist and I'm rather annoyed. Between the free precise bomb and the sheer damage output he's dealing, even with the level appropriate CR encounters, he and the barbarian are ending my encounters in a few rounds if I'm lucky with almost no consequences to the party. After looking in to the bombs feature here: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist#TOC-Bomb-Su- I noticed something that got me confused. It says, "Drawing the components of, creating, and throwing a bomb requires a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity." and RIGHT after that it says, "Thrown bombs have a range of 20 feet and use the Throw Splash Weapon special attack." Now, Throw Splash Weapon rules state that it is a full round action JUST to prep the thrown weapon. This makes MUCH more sense to me, as being able to do 3d6 a round without hitting allies or move anywhere near combat seems completely broken. Every OTHER round makes more sense, and seems to fit, but my player is adamantly arguing that the Throw Splash Weapon rules do NOT apply. Help?

How do you get 14 Int, 18 Wis, and 14 Chr with a 10 point buy, out of curiosity?

Bomanz is probably right, since Wizards are Nethys favorite.