Yakmar

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Organized Play Member. 77 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 3 Organized Play characters.


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You got it right. Elementals are not immaterial like a ghost or shadow, even if they are made of fire or air. I know it defies that common sense thought we all have but the game is not reality and this is one of those areas where the laws of real physics do not apply.


Thanks and please forgive the question since I rarely post on here. Do you work for Paizo/Pathfinder or are you another gamer like me putting in their 2 cents?

Thanks.


Thanks for the answer and this mostly answers my questions. What about circumstances where a medusa or basilisk are sleeping, unconscious, or blinded? If a rogue walks in on a sleeping medusa or a blinded basilisk, do they have to save, or is the gaze "turned off" until the creature's condition changes?

Thanks for the prompt response.


After reading through many other posts and checking the FAQ, I decided to start a new thread.
There seems to be confusion, and conflicting guidance as to what a gaze constitutes, and how similar many of the interpretations seem to be to auras. Some clarification from Paizo would be apprecaited with regard to the gaze ability creatures like medusas and basilisks have.
While the concept of a gaze attack seems pretty straight forward in that vision is involved... a variety of circumstances resulting in many posts on this topic have prompted the need for clarification.
For example, if eye to eye contact cannot be made because one party is sleeping, or both are in darkness, or one is invisible, or senses other than vision are employed (echolocation, tremorsense, blindsense, etc...), is the gaze attack thwarted?
Additionally, if eye to eye contact is not needed, is the gaze attack a defensive ability (meaning that creatures within the necessary range who see the gazing creature are affected) or an offensive ability where the gazing creature needs to actually see (not just percieve such as with an invisible character) the target/victim of its gaze?
If someone would be so kind as to provide some guidance or game mechanics to go by, it would be most helpful.

Thanks for your time and consideration.


A few points worth consideration to the various positions.

First of all, druids cannot cast spells with a verbal component in animal form normally (a feat is required) to bypass this. Here is the narrative from the Druid Class. "A druid loses her ability to speak while in animal form because she is limited to the sounds that a normal, untrained animal can make, but she can communicate normally with other animals of the same general grouping as her new form."

Secondly, I would say Druids are not more powerful shifters than wizards or sorcerers. Druids can remain in various forms for much longer but do not have access to things like Giant Forms, Dragon Forms, Undead Forms, or the expanded beast shape options. In effect druids gain greatly expanded duration which is sacrificed for versatility.

As for the casting of spells, there are several options. Besides the feat intended for druids, silent spell eliminates the casting issue for all classes using alternate forms, as do language proficiencies. If you're an air elemental and you speak Auran, you're good to go, no feat needed for that specific form and language combination.

Part of my problem with the lack of beast shape 4 access is not so much the magical beast issues as it is the animal abilities limited to beastshape 4. For example, as a snake you don't get constriction until beast shape 4 (although you get grab at 1 or 2). You also have no poisonous venom until 4, even if you can take the form of a cobra at beastshape 1... You don't get to throw barbs/quills as a porcupine until 4, etc... The list is rather long but I think the point here is made.

Responses continue to be appreciated.


First of all I want to take a quick moment to apologize if this is a re-posting of a question that may have been posed in the past several years.

I'm playing a druid for the first time since Pathfinder beta, and I noticed that druids recieve as part of their shape changing abilities elemental form 4, but not beastshape 4. Was this intentional or in error? From a RP perspective I find it difficult to believe that a sorcerer/wizard would have access to beastshape 4, but a druid would not....

Also, several new abilities of animals, plants, and elementals have been presented in bestiaries subsequent to the Player's Handbook release. Are there any supplimental rules or guidance regarding what a druid would or wouldn't qualify for in light of these developments?

Thanks,


Session 2
Everything in session two went pretty much as scripted. The one exception being Grim "Pale Eyes" Scrant's vital role on the island of commanding the available undead so that the campaign doesn't end with the fight between the PCs and Mr.Plugg's pukes.

As scripted, the players are highly unlikely to have enough crew to sail away without taking the -10 to sailing checks. At the player's current level, this is likely a campaign ending event since they would crash the ship on the first day from repeated failed sailing checks.

Its reasonably possible to have fewer than 10 survivors meaning there isn't sufficient crew to even launch the ship and the campaign ends from there not being enough people to leave the island.

To mitigate this mechanical campaign kill (game mechanics killing the campaign) I inserted the necromancer Grim "Pale Eyes" Scrant as a relatively new addition to the Wormwood crew. As a cleric of Besmara he was friendly with Sandara Quinn and an easy catch for the PCs (who need all the help they can get on the diplomatic front).


Session 1
Additional events I scripted in based on flavor texts and narratives provided by the authors at Piazo are as follows:

-The game "Heave" I think it is (I don't have the module at hand as I write this) was an excellent opportunity for Conchobhar to attempt to use his elixer of love and his crush on Rosie Cusswell. He rolled poorly and was spotted prompting a short fight. Rosie rolled a not. 20 with her handaxe and promptly took Conchobhar's hand off, which sent him screaming to a different part of the ship for medical help.

-Heave also provided a wonderful opportunity for a darker side of the pirates to come out where I think its Tilly Brackett who liked her rum. That evening she liked it a bit too much and passed out, which some of plugg's friends took advantage of in the bilge pumps. A PC happened to make a DC 20 perception check (the female sea elf) to overhear what was going on, and upon investigation see Tilly without cloths or consciousness. Rather than get help or alert some of Tilly's drinking buddies like Fishguts and Quartermaster Cutthroat Grok, the 1st level character tried to be heroic. She got herself knocked out and taken advantage of herself. Had the charater been male, he would have been accused of taking advantage of Tilly and been keelhauled.

-Revenge for the incident in the Bilges came swiftly though. Tilly's knowledge of Cutthroat's routine gave her a decent bonus to accessing the quartermaster's store undetected, and with the Sea Elf standing watch, proceeded to loot the quartermaster's store (damaging some locks and activating some traps in the process). The stolen supplies were left in the lockers of the pirates responsible for the event in the Bilges, and Capt. Harrigan's justice system did the rest. Given that virtually every roll I did at the table for Tilly was a 15+ for this resulting in her success, I leveled her.

-The catfolk Tiefling decided to get a bit of action herself and happened to get walked in on by another player when that player went to go and attempt to influence the NPC the tiefling was with. The player was quite embarrassed at the whole thing which everyone got a good laugh about.

-The second scripted incident in the Bilges happened as written, but the NPCs scored a critical hit, slipping a dagger between the ribs and into the heart of the catfolk tiefling killing it in the surprise round. Given how the dice rolled, the PC never had a chance to act.

-I had also planned on having the druid's companion snapping turtle cooked for food if/when fishgut's assistant failed to catch enough turtles when that job came up. Despite several opportunities for failure, the dice held up for the player and in doing so earned the druid's gratitude.

By the end of the first session, the players seemed quite motivated to put Plugg and his friends into the grave.


Upon being informed that the campaign I am GMing has a thread I feel obligated to provide some additional narratives so that aspects of the game Croaker is not aware of can be shared with those who have an interest. I initially called this group of PCs the monster mash but have since come to realize its actually Team Skyrim. Without prior coordination, there is a Kajit/catfolk tiefling, a lizardman/argonian, an Orc (not a 1/2 orc), a sea elf, and a human.


Nice idea but you can't activate items not in your possession unless the descriptor says otherwise. Once the item isn't in your possession its outside your control. For your idea to work use delayed blast fireballs instead of holly-berries and you're good to go.


One of the things I'm having a hard time with is that the new base classes in many respects look more like prestige classes. The new base classes abilities seem to be more powerful than the current base classes and more powerful than many prestige classes. If the idea is to design a prestige class I'd be all for it but not a base class.

If anything I think the base classes should be even more "base". Are you focused on divine casting or arcane, ranged combat or close combat, heavily armored or lightly armored. If you are a blend of ranged combat and arcane then you would likely qualify for the arcane archer, light armor and melee could be a monk or barbarian which would be elevated to prestige classes and not a base class because they're already (in my opinion) too specialized.

Imagine if we played our characters from 0 to level 1 where we chose from a batch of feats what our trained skills were, our weapon and armor proficiency categories were, whether we had minor spell abilities (ranger/paladin) , moderate (bard), or major (wizard, cleric, druid, sorcerer). Depending on what combination we chose we would qualify for certain "base" classes. From there we could progress into "prestige classes" or find ourselves qualifying for a prestige class without ever having a "base class". Its an idea and I'm sure not everyone shares but its my posting and I can go on a tangent if I want.

Ultimately I don't want to see Pathfinder go the direction of 3.5 where more powerful items and classes keep getting created so that more and more books can get sold. While Pathfinder is a business its a business that would be better not repeating the mistakes of companies that came before it.


Since Turin the Mad is my GM I'll refer to him for corroboration but the last dragon we encountered was in the crimson throne campaign near the end.

That dragon chose to switch sides and become my mount when I (as a medium sized fire elemental formed druid with certain gear not merged into my form) pulled out ten necklaces of fireball and threatened to voluntarily fail the item saves for the necklaces.

I recommend that if this AC 40+ critter is a dragon you make him red unless you want to be providing me with a new pet!!!

P.S. If the opportunity presents itself I'll solo the critter and let you know how it went!!!


For my 2 cents the player versus player is fine. I've killed other PCs and been killed by them. It requires a level of maturity on part of the player to understand this is a game. Winning and surviving should never be inevitable. PCs are going to have conflicts, they may kill eachother (preferably in game), and that's life. Player versus player conflict can make the game more enjoyable so long as the players aren't emotionally wrapped up in their character. For the Dms part I'd say have them both make back-up characters (to help the players mentally detach for what may come ahead) and not be favorable to one or the other. Be the rules lawyer and let the players play their characters to whatever end comes from it.


I wouldn't mind seeing the summon monster / nature's ally spells move in the direction of the planar ally / binding direction. You chose the critter of appropriate HD or CR. IN nature's ally cas the CR/HD would be slightly higher while limited to animals and perhaps elementals. Something along those lines. There's still too many useless critters on the low level for higher level play. For example at 11th level ray of enfeeblement or magic missile is still helpful, that 1 HD dog with his +1 to hit doesn't even qualify as an annoyance.


I'd prefer some simpler things like why is mage armor a touch spell while shield is a self spell? Also if mage armor is a first level spell that gives a +4 armor bonus, wouldn't a wizard also make a "mage shield" spell that gives a +4 shield bonus?


I recently read the players guide for Kingmaker and found nothing wrong with it. had the information in question be omitted I think it would have detracted from the guide. The point about having characters appropriate to the campaign is also very important. I think most of us who have been playing for a long time have dealt with characters built in ways not conducive to a campaign (such as a ranger specialized in desert melee combat finding himself in an ocean going adventure with lots of ranged combat)


Be careful with the spell swapping since it would essentially give all casters benefits allocated to a specific class (mystic theurge)


A simple solution would be to say clerics specialize in wielding positive and negative energies, druids elemental energies, and mages, bards, and sorcerers with raw magical energies that are manipulated into many forms already present on your current plane (explains why these unrefined magical energies turn into fire, lightening, etc...)

Also, keep the spell lists seperate. It will unbalance your game with everyone playing clerics for the better things they get than mages.


The party I'm in right now has a monk. We're level 12, his AC is in the high 30s / low 40s when he goes full defense. The party as a whole is level + 20 in our ACs. The point being don't sweat the AC, the monk's vulnerabilities are in other areas.


Consider:

swapping your dex and cha, use your first feat to gain selective channeling

if you're human consider tower shield proficiency as well.

look at travel domain if you're going with heavy armor (your build indicates you will go heavy armor) Starting at level 1 with an AC of 20 will help ensure you (and the party) stay alive. Advance to full plate as quickly as possible while keeping your AC at your level +20.

as levels progress your reflex will fall behind your other saves (lightning reflexes and the improved version will go a long ways to making up for that)

avoid the item creation at low levels, focus on survival.

if your DM allows traits seriously consider the wealth trait, the difference it makes in starting equipment at first level is huge, and at first level anything can kill you with a crit even with max. hp.


size large light crossbows rock because medium creatures can use them with two hands (instead of the standard one)

size large two handed weapons don't work so well, imagine trying to wield a stop sign.


Ethical paradox for consideration. A neutral cleric animates a bunch of corpses to protect a group of innocent women and children while the party goes off to deal with the threat. Because of the cleric's efforts, the undead sucessfully beatback a goblin attack that would have otherwise resulted in the abuse and slaughter of the innocent women and children.
My take on this is that the cleric did a good deed by creating the undead for a good purpose. The undead (or summoned critters)are tools of the controller. What is done with them should determine whether their use is good or bad.

A slightly different twist is for an evil wizard to bind an angel and force an angel to massacre an orphanage. Shouldn't you get to use smite evil on the Angel because of what its doing rather than not getting to because "its a good creature"?


A recent wizard I played had a familiar that was a dog. By the time we reached third level the party had named it Dogmeat (from Fallout series) because it had more kills than 1/2 the other party members had. Ultimately it wasn't a big deal. Certain character builds don't "enter their prime" until certain levels. That's just part of the game.


It was tactics, completely legit and very realistic by its description. (I'm a veteran) If you're not smart enough to recon your targets you're rolling the dice with your life. Against a decently prepared adversary you might as well be comitting suicide even if you are "higher level". Lastly, adventuring is dangerous. You need to be smart enough to know when to run or not pick certain fights.


There is no such thing. For all the effort put into one area, other areas will be more lacking. You can have all the hp you want, if you fail a will save from being teleported into the middle of the ocean and can't swim in full plate, forcibly plane shifted to hell, can't get away from the flying invisible wizard with the wand of magic missiles, can't grapple out of a coup de grace, etc...

Being truely unkillable is very difficult. The closest I came involved turning myself into a lich and entrusting my phalactery to my God via miracle. The DM who thoroughly enjoyed killing PCs was not happy.


Take a light crossbow (1D8, one handed) upgrade it to a large light crossbow (2d6, 2 hands) it has the same reload time as the light crossbow and it does better damage than the heavy. Problem solved.


Also the scroll spell level is the base level. The difference in value really is negligible in comparison to how much loot gets thrown around over the course of a campaign.


Allips, Oh Boy! Are they coming out with summon undead yet!?! One of my favorite things is to use clairvoyance and then summon Allips to send them through the walls upon unsuspecting enemies :D The first time I did this to a DM was a hysterically wonderful encounter.


Here to request Allips and Azers plz.


I'm going to try and take this in a slightly different direction. If I were an Elvin parent and I had 60-80 years to teach my son / daughter things before they reached adulthood, that child should have about as much experience as a human racks up in a life time. What that means is that while a human adventurer may start at level one, the elf should be starting at level 5, and not be leaving home before reaching that level. Especially if I'm only able to have 1 child every 100 years or so. What kind of responsible elvin parent lets their level one child go out adventuring to be killed by 2 kobolds with javelins?

This seems to be an issue completely overlooked because of how simple it is. The opposite is also true, old elves should be very scary because they've been around so long, how could they not be level 15+ Granted 10 of those levels may be in a fluffy profession, but that's still ph, base attack and save, equipment, etc..

P.S. Papa Smurf is epic so the next time Gargamel comes to raid the smurf village I expect to at least see some fireballs!


I've been in several campaigns where this has been house ruled. It added simplicity to the game and kept things moving. I highly recommend it.


This question reflects a pet peeve of mine that I have with most DMs. They are too scared of upsetting their players to play their enemies to their full extent.

the quick answer to the question is yes, sundering is perfectly acceptable, as is sending in skilled thieves to rob parties foolish enough to sleep in dungeons with little precaution, coup de grace sleeping PCs, having predators swallow PC's whole and fly off with them (that's what they do in reality, and yes the player may have to deal with the 20D6 fall damage once they're out of the gullet), etc...

The bottom line is that when a group of adventurers arrives with the intent on killing you, you're going to use everything you have available to survive and either kill them or get away. That's why adventurer is supposed to be a rare profession, their chances of dying on the job are higher than that of a terrorist. If a PC doesn't die in an adventure you as the DM probably pulled your punches too much. In turn, make sure many of your NPCs interact with adventurer's appropriately. A moderately recent example used in a movie of what I'm referring to is the first 30-45min. in Kingdom of Heaven. The townsfolk stay way out of the way of the crusaders, and in the ambush scene several PCs die. That's the real life of an adventurer.


troglodytes.


One other aspect worth serious consideration is the enemy response to the full round casting time. If an adversary of yours starts casting and continues casting past their standard action into the next persons actions you know that when the spell finishes something bad is going to happen. As such, the caster becomes the party's #1 target so the spell can be interrupted. So, unless you want to be making frequent concentration checks and be the priority target for enemy spells I'd suggest passing on playing a summoner. The creatures summoned are not worth the penalties.


I'm going to buck the trend on this one and say its fine the way it is. Here's why.

Without animal companion you get the domain abilities but can still cast charm animal and spend the time training one.

With animal companion you get the same kind of animal you could have charmed, but it gets extra HD and some abilities.

So the question is, do those extra HD and abilities equal a domain? If they do, then the current setup is balanced. If they don't, then the animal companion's abilities need to be adjusted to correctly compensate.


I think it sounds cool and I can't think of it having a significant impact on the game mechanics.


Kaisoku,
Sorry for the delay in my response to your question. I never played a druid in 3.5 so I can't really give feedback on the difference between the pathfinder version and the 3.5 version. All I know is what I've learned from playing a pathfinder druid since late spring.


Ultimately the precise shot requirements takes up game time and makes combat more complicated so my vote is to ditch it. I have to grant that from a common sense perspective it makes sense. But between the -4, recalculating AC, and everything else that the mechanics currently require for it, its too much.

A happy medium for at least me would be to simply say that when firing into melee there is a 25% chance of hitting another person in the melee (within a 5 ft. square) without the feat. It would save the math and calculation time and keep the game moving.


I'd say it would be best improved by either:

1- getting rid of it completely

or

2- Making it stackable with improved critical and having it be the same as improved crit. within 30 ft.

Realistically speaking, longbow men were their deadliest at close range because they were so skilled, they would aim for the eye slits of the knights while the knights were mounted and charging them. That's why when you look at helmets through different ages the eye slits get a lot smaller.


I agree, the bonus needs to be about a +2 / +3 to really be worth it. Since dodge applies to being attacked by all kinds of weapons and goes up to a +2 at 10th level... A weapon focus restricts the player on the bonus to one weapon so I would say a +2 at first and +1 more at every 10 levels.


I think that this version of the class goes too far, in that it allows the player to play multiple characters. Yes the "additional characters" are different and have some reduced capabilities... but in many ways this would allow the player to lock their character up in a box (or stay in town) while their respective "doubles" to go out and take all the risk.


I have to concur with velderan. An assassin's job is to hunt down and kill a target. If its going to be a dual class blend it needs to be ranger / rogue, not monk / rogue. Monk's abilities and class really has nothing to do with hunting someone down to kill them.


Keepiru wrote:

"Why not reanimate the victim as an undead creature? Resurrection and True Ress can raise the dead if the victim has been turned into and undead creature and then destroyed. But what happens if the undead creature isn't destroyed? If you're paying for an assassination and you are concerned with the person coming back to life, pay a little extra for the animate dead scroll. The assassin animates the target and buries him in a tomb somewhere. Or put the undead in a bag of holding and puncture the bag.
It requires a bit of creativity on the players part, but you can defeat those high level spells"

It does require creativity on the player's part, but I don't know of many rogues / assassins that would have the knowledge ranks necessary to know the intricacies of how true resurrection works and how to circumvent it... That puts players in the position of playing out of character and using out of character knowledge. The simplist fix would be to require the assassin have "X" number of ranks in knowledge arcana so that the assassin would know better...
But to be more realistic, an assassin shouldn't have to study knowledge arcana for weeks and months on end to know whether they're going to be able to do their job properly or not. Making a "stay dead" class feature makes sense and goes a long ways to making the assassin class one worth playing.


Kaisoku,
You have some good points in your post. For you're reference I'm playtesting a Pathfinder druid now, I'm level 12 and started at 1.

The damage a druid can now put at per round by spell has been substantially reduced in trade for being able to pump it out over time. With the new changes to the cleric's death spells now only dealing direct damage, the druid deals much less damage than a cleric or a wizard. The trade off is that the druid can deal out about the same amount over more time, and has better defenses from their wildshape.

A front line druid could be built and the shape changing would make that druid a lot more durable but things like the stacking of bulls strength on top of what shape changing gives you is gone and what shape changing gives you in compared in what the druid had in 3.5 is about half as useful.

In comparison between a 3.5 druid and a pathfinder druid, I'd say the pathfinder druid has lost about 30-40% of its capabilities. Part of that is by design and part of it is that there isn't a ridiculous amount of supplemental books out there that enable players to make more and yet more powerful characters.

The animal companion issue is largely negligible due to the charm animal and handle animal capabilities of a druid. The 'bond' the druid has with their companion has been watered down to a bonus on handle animal checks, nothing more. The bonus HD and abilities an animal gets by being the druid's companion is about on par to a reduced version of a leadership cohort. Its just that the companion's experience isn't tracked, they just get bonuses that reflect how they would have grown with the experience they would have earned...

I agree that if the companion is going to stay it needs to be reworked into something else. I would like to see the companion almost be more of a sentient mystical force that could bond with animals similar to how a voluntary and shared version of a possession my work. This would essentially make the animal companion very smart and versatile but not have the animal be anything more than what it normally is.


If a person wants to play a character like a historical hoplite/spartan (think of the movie 300) who used the equivalent of tower shields and longspears the ability to wield a long spear one handed is necessary. This would be a good opportunity for a prestige class. Between the reach, incorporating bonuses to trip, tweaking how attacks of opportunity would work (like being able to make an attack of opportunity when an enemy only takes a 5 ft. step exclusive to the prestige class) kinds of things would make a good addition to the game.


You know I've been noticing an interesting trend. The people who have play tested druids in Pathfinder for at least a few levels have found them to be underpowered or at best equal to their other companions, while most everyone who hasn't is constantly saying they're overpowered. Inevitably people are going to disagree, but for those who say that a druid is overpowered I would encourage them to play a druid as the book has it, rather than simply read about their abilities and critique.


For the animals, just give them progression as they advance in HD from basic to dire to legendary. Beef up how tough they get as they advance in HD.

I would like to see resolution with the whole formian /thri kreen / insect race. I like the concept, I'd like it to be kept in, but I'd like it to be consistent.


gone, not missed, and frequently not enforced per many DMs house rules, including mine.


With mage hand now being at will the ranged leg. should now be at will too. That makes too much sense. Altering the DCs is debatable and I can see both sides to that coin.

I'd leave the spell progression and sneak attack as is. The tricks the character uses right now is entirely dependent on the individual player's creativity. With the full spell progression and most of the basic rogue aspects of the class going for you, the player should be able to come up with a litany of tricks on their own.

If its something people really wanted then I'd suggest adding an element of the 3.5 trap maker into the arcane trickster in place of the impromptu sneak attack. That way there is the added element of being "tricky" I think is reasonable to want in a class like this.


The proficiencies for druids are a little skewed. I also found the fact that they aren't proficient with heavy armor interesting since in the items there is dragon scale full plate specifically for the druid to use...

Most of the time when I encounter things like this I'd just talk to the GM and say "this doesn't make sense" and we'd work it out. But since this is a playtest it should probably be mentioned that the proficiencies the druid has should reflect their beliefs a little better. Bows can be made from things found in nature so they should be allowed. I have yet to see a scimitar as a naturally occurring phenomenon.

The druids should probably be as proficient as clerics or basic fighters except that they cannot use metal. All of their carried goods would have to be made out of wood or stone. As such while the cleric wields the steel heavy mace the druid would wield the same weapon that has a wooden handle and granite end. In the end the weapon and its damage would be the same but it would add flavor to the druid and be in line with the druid's beliefs.

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