MacGurcules's page

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A quick way to make not a lot of friends around here is to go into a thread and start demanding "OFFICIAL RULINGS." The people who frequent these boards are quite knowledgeable and if you get a consensus answer, you can generally rely on it.

And that is official.

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It should be noted, though, that if you're in a situation where you can craft, you're in a situation where you can take 10 on the craft roll. So for scribing scrolls, so it's entirely likely an actual roll is unnecessary.

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C) You cannot rake on a pounce. In order to rake something you have to start the round already in a grapple with it.

It surprises me how many people go out of their way to contradict others on this when they apparently haven't read the text for pounce, themselves.

When a creature with this special attack makes a charge, it can make a full attack (including rake attacks if the creature also has the rake ability).

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Sometimes I wish there was a flag for, "Replying to a two-year-dead thread and doesn't realize it."

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From the equipment section:
Two-Handed: Two hands are required to use a two-handed melee weapon effectively. Apply 1-1/2 times the character's Strength bonus to damage rolls for melee attacks with such a weapon.

The lance has a special rule that says you can wield it in one hand, not that you treat it as a one-handed weapon. That would be different. There is no provision on damage for using a variable number of hands with a two-handed weapon. That exists only for the one-handed weapons. Two-handed weapons always use 1.5x Strength.

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The dueling property and the enhancement bonus are both on the same weapon in this case: the bite natural weapon.

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In response to Kimera, as a point of fact, the stat boosting items in Pathfinder are all Caster Level 8, but that doesn't mean you need to be 8th level to craft them. That's the level at which they manifest their relevant abilities for the purposes of determining duration, strength, resistance to dispel magic, etc.

You can actually craft them as soon as you can cast the necessary spell and make a item CL+5 Spellcraft check. So in the case of the various headbands and belts, that would be level 3. The real limitation, as usual for gear, is accumulated wealth. For a level 9 character using the base wealth guideline, he'd have to spend over a third of his money to get craft a +6 headband/belt. Is that unreasonable? Maybe not, but I could think of a lot more useful places to spend the 10,000 gp difference between that and a +4 headband.

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I have a suspicion that the ability was written with the expectation that the succubus would be the one starting the grapple.

That said, some monsters are more dangerous than others when grappling. Seems legit to me.

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Doesn't seem that tricky to me.

A creature with this special attack gains extra natural attacks under certain conditions, typically when it grapples its foe. In addition to the options available to all grapplers, a monster with the rake ability gains two free claw attacks that it can use only against a grappled foe. The bonus and damage caused by these attacks is included in the creature’s description. A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn already grappling to use its rake—it can’t begin a grapple and rake in the same turn.

The ability specifically says several things in a very small number of words:

two free claw attacks - There are two separate attacks here with separate damage rolls.
two free claw attacks - These attacks are free actions, not attached to something such as a full attack.
two free claw attacks - These attacks are indeed claws with all of the benefits and drawbacks thereof.
two free claw attacks - They are actually attacks, necessitating an attack roll for each one.

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I'm more interested in taking a dagger and having it turn into an unarmed strike. Affordable weapon enchantment for non-flurrying unarmed monks and piercing or slashing damage at the expense of dice when needed without compromising the magic item budget makes non-dip sensei, maneuver master, and many styles monks not get shafted on enhancement bonus pricing.

I'm with Atarlost. The more interesting application of this magic is to convert weapons to unarmed strikes and not the other way around. You get to enchant the underlying weapon at the regular rate (+10,000 for transformative, of course) but you still get to use your increased unarmed damage progression. It's not really cost effective over an amulet of mighty fists until you get to +3, but beyond that, it just keeps getting better.

Though, really, the most obvious weapon to do this with is the brass knuckles, isn't it?

"Yo dawg, we put transformative on your brass knuckles. Now you've got a fist on your fist so you can punch while you punch."

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Seems like the section on Spell-Like Effects should really read, "In all other ways, a spell-like ability functions just like a spell, except for all of these other ways that aren't mentioned."

Errata on the way, maybe?

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Okay, so this comes up kind of frequently. Let's lay out an example that hopefully makes all of it clear.

Let's assume the shambling mound starts its turn ungrappled and within reach of its target.

The shambling mound can make a full attack to attempt two Slam attacks. If the first one hits, it deals damage for the attack as normal and it can do a grapple attempt for free. If that grapple attempt succeeds, it will do the damage listed for constrict and both it and its opponent gain the grappled condition. Grappling with grab does not interrupt a full attack, so at this point, it can take its second Slam attack. However, because it's already grappled, it does not get a second grapple roll (or the subsequent constrict damage) if this one hits since Grab is only good for starting grapples.

Alternately, after dealing constrict damage from the first grapple attempt, it can release the grapple as a free action. Then when it makes its second Slam it can try to start another grapple with Grab and get an additional constrict damage.

Now, if it is still grappling with its opponent at the start of its next turn, it can release the grapple as a free action and attempt another full attack as above, or it can choose to maintain the grapple as a standard action. It gets a +5 bonus for this grapple roll for being the one in control of the grapple. If it succeeds this check, as part of Grab, it automatically does damage from the slam attack that it used to start the grapple, then it automatically does its constrict damage, then it has its choice of the three standard grapple actions, move, pin, or do additional damage equal to one slam. In this instance you would not get any attacks outside of the roll to maintain the grapple, since doing so expends a standard action.

So if you do the Slam, Grapple, Constrict, Release routine during a full attack, you can potentially do four attacks worth of damage each round. However this requires landing two attack rolls and two grapple maneuver rolls. From the second round forward, if you choose to maintain the grapple you make grapple roll at +5 and do three attacks worth of damage. Math-wise, that will frequently come out ahead.

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Check the Combat chapter. Under move actions it outlines that you can crawl five feet as a move action while prone and doing so provokes an AoO.

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Yep. TWF doesn't make a distinction between light, one-handed, and two-handed. It just has light and not-light. Bows are clearly not light weapons, so with the feat, it should be -4/-4.

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Look at Musket Training in Musket Master. It's worded almost identically and it does replace gun training. That Pistol Training doesn't is a pretty clear oversight. Besides, it sounds like you're the GM. You can make whatever ruling you want.

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The only restrictions that I know of due to impaired vision are from being blinded. Vision in fog is impaired but substantially less so than being blinded, so I don't believe a movement penalty on that order applies.

I don't think it'd be completely uncalled for to require an acrobatics check for characters that attempt to run or charge through a fog.

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Certainly that is very tidy, but to me, the rules clearly do not support restricting it to only AoO per action. By my reading they clearly allow multiple and the easiest way of determining how many AoOs an action draws, as outlined by the rules, is to count how many times it provokes.

Now, I know you do not agree with that reading (and by now I'm sure I don't have to direct you on how I get there) but you can at least see how it makes more sense than allowing multiple attacks on an action by breaking down when certain provoking parts might happen.

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Thanks for posting this. And to expand upon this, the casting of a spell requiring a ranged touch attack is one opportunity, not two (to reiterate, the casting of the spell and the rolling of the ranged touch attack are a singular event). If the caster then decided to move after casting the spell, THAT would provoke a second opportunity.

It appears that you still don't understand the core of the disagreement here. Even if that clause actually limits you to two attacks of opportunity per round on the same opponent rather than providing an example of multiple provocations, there is nothing that explicitly limits you to only one attack of opportunity per action. The only limiting factor is one attack per opportunity. It says that if an opponent provokes twice, each time is a different opportunity. So if an opponent provokes twice in the same action (such as by casting a spell and making a ranged attack) that counts as two opportunities and invites two attacks of opportunity.

You may disagree with this and that's fine. There is room for interpretation. But do at least understand the position of the people you're arguing against.

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I think slavishly adhering to the WBL guidelines to the point that you're subverting your players' actions is really depowering from a player-involvement standpoint. Why should your players go out of their way to be creative about obtaining loot if they're just going to end up with the same thing either way?

Sure, you have to be careful to keep everyone at the right strength for the campaign but try not to be so baldfaced about it. If the players don't feel like they can influence the outcome of their characters it becomes very discouraging.

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James makes a good point here in insisting on the distinction between provocation and opportunity because I believe it is important.

However, I must disagree that the rules are devoid of guidance on what constitutes an opportunity. The rules section on Combat Reflexes and Additional Attacks of Opportunity says that each time an opponent provokes it represents a separate opportunity. So a separate opportunity is generated for every provocation regardless of how many actions are taken.

Using movement as an example of an action that can provoke multiple times is good because movement is specifically called out as only providing one opportunity despite provoking multiple times. That suggests that provoking multiple times otherwise would present multiple opportunities.

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We're going in circles.

He does one thing.
Doing that thing, he provokes from condition 1.
Doing that thing, he provokes from condition 2.
Each time he provokes is a separate opportunity.

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I don't think matching the alignment of the spell still enables a summoned creature to bypass a Protection from Evil spell.

Sure does.

...Third, the spell prevents bodily contact by evil summoned creatures. This causes the natural weapon attacks of such creatures to fail and the creatures to recoil if such attacks require touching the warded creature. Summoned creatures that are not evil are immune to this effect...

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The most important thing I can stress is that you, as the GM, are no less a player than the rest of your group. You're in it to have fun too and you're not beholden to entertain your players at the expense of your own enjoyment. So don't stress out about it too much. You're all working together so everyone can have a good time.

And in that spirit, a suggestion: My own regular GM is pretty great but he can sometimes have a tendency to gloss over the details of certain things or needs prompting to really lay out a scene. So one thing that happens in my group that I think really enhances everyone's experience is that a couple of us will make up little details of our own that our characters observe. Nothing major. We'll invent a name for the apothecary's shop if one isn't mentioned or give an otherwise unremarkable NPC a distinguishing characteristic.

It's nice when not all of the exposition comes straight from the GM alone. It lightens his workload a little and it lets the players really own the experience. So maybe talk with your players and invite them to inject a little of their own imagination into the world.

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It seems silly to me that the monk isn't just a full BAB class from the start. There are all of these patches and fills around it. Flurry works at full BAB, Monks do maneuvers at full BAB, a bunch of combat feats that are attractive to monks have a "BAB +X or Monk level X" requirement.

Just make them full BAB and that solves a lot of weirdness to start.

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Maxximilius wrote:

- Can you simply switch your weapon to off-hand as a free action and do your off-hands attacks with it ?

Presumably this would be prohibited for the same reason you don't see TWF fighters running around with a single shortsword.

Because they haven't thought of it, yet?

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So this brings up a related question. If passing a weapon from one hand to another is a free action, can't you just pass your +5 sai from your "main hand" to your "off hand" in the middle of a flurry? This isn't necessarily strictly flurry-related. It has good flavor for a rogue to be tossing a dagger from one hand to the other in the middle of a TWF-boosted full attack.

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You can look at things like enhancement bonuses and try to price the thing out accordingly. But the way I see it, there are guidelines for designing an item that casts a spell and that's the simplest way to do it.

Take the venerable Hat of Disguise, for instance. It casts a specific first level spell at will. If we tried to break it down, like trying to equate the effect of True Strike to enhancement bonus, we'd be looking at a +10 skill bonus. With that kind of reasoning, the Hat of Disguise should cost 10,000 gold. Maybe more, since Disguise Self provides an untyped bonus.

But it doesn't cost 10,000 gold. It costs 1800. And it does that while closely following the item creation guidelines. Since it's basically just casting the spell, you still need to expend a standard action to activate it and you're still limited to a 10 minute duration as per the CL1 of the item.

A proposed Ring of True Strike ought to follow a similar pattern. It's a specific first level spell castable at will. Now you can argue that True Strike is a much more powerful or useful spell than Disguise Self and that may be true for a lot of campaigns. There's a reason the item creation guidelines aren't called item creation rules. You're free to limit it to a handful of uses per day or bump the price up to compensate. But if you start proposing that an item like this should cost tens of thousands of gold, you might as well just be saying that True Strike should be a 4th level spell or higher.

A standard action True Strike at will is not all that devastating. For most characters, it means one boosted attack roll every other round. And half of that character's rounds are spent not doing anything otherwise useful.

Now if you start speculating on what it would take to make it a swift action or faster, you're sailing off into uncharted territory. A use-action or continuous True Strike doesn't make sense by nature of the way the spell operates, that's pretty clear. And command word items are specifically activated as a standard action, not at the speed of whatever spell effect they emulate. There are no guidelines for making command word items that operate on a swift action. That's by design. Once you start handing out swift actions, things start getting way less predictable and way more abusable. Any speculation of what's balanced or fair is beyond the purview of the rules and relegated to homebrew.

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My group has always used Summon Minor Monster/Nature's Ally for decoys, diversions, and tossing into suspected trapped areas. Not really all that useful for combat.

We also cut out the specific spell and just stuck the minor creatures into the a "level-0" tier on the summon list. So a Summon Monster I could get you 1d3 and a Summon Monster II could get you 1d4+1. Not needing to dedicate a whole spell slot to just minor creatures increases the frequency that they get summoned when a fun opportunity presents itself.

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Lee and Karkon have the right of it. Command word activated items operate as if they cast a spell at their listed CL and they aren't subject to the price multiplier for continuous items. In exchange for them being cheaper, you have to expend a standard action every time you activate it.