Your players are entering the level range where a true tpk should be extremely difficult if they've done a little bit of prep. A contingency teleport spell to a friendly temple, triggered on character death, and you're covered. You can leave your plans with a friendly druid with directions to follow you, sneak out with some material, and reincarnate you if you go missing for more than three days. There's also things like the clone spell. This is all assuming too that no one in the party managed to escape the party wipe in the first place. If someone DOES escape, it's on them to determine how they're going to bring the rest of the party back - or not. But if you DO get a total tpk, well... time for a new campaign or a new party. Personally, I'd prefer a new campaign. No matter what you do, something will be lost. If you have a full TPK and someone brings the party back, you've just informed them that they're not in any real peril and they can coast to the conclusion of your story. If you let them bring in NEW characters, you're telling them something similar - one way or another the group is going to win even if it means throwing new party members into the mix over and over again. There's no true failure. So I prefer losing the occasional campaign to a TPK over losing the tension of playing the game. Caveat time: if you wipe, or nearly wipe, the party because you're homebrewing battle mechanics based on wow raids... mea culpa that. Be up front with it - hopefully before you wipe the party but if necessary immediately after it happens and just rewind to immediately prior to that fight. Admit you f@$*ed up by giving the boss a homebrew ability that was broken, and tell them you're not going to penalize the party because you were the one who made a mistake. Of course, only use that as an option if it was your error and not simply bad decisions made by party members. Let legitimate losses stand, and be upfront about an error if the loss was unfair and based on a broken mechanic. At that point, you might let them redo the fight without that mechanic, or just give them a super toned down enemy since, you know, they already fought that enemy once before.
"It appears where you designate and acts immediately, on your turn. It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions." The person who casts the spell controls the summoned monster. It attacks enemies of the caster to the best of its ability. The summoned monster has immediate knowledge, apparently magically obtained as part of the spell, on who the summoner considers their opponents. Given that, the question is just, "Summoner, do you now consider your body and the creature inhabiting it to be an opponent?" If the answer to that is yes, then the summoned monster will treat the caster's body the same as any other enemy and, barring further instructions, will probably attack either whichever enemy is closest or whichever enemy it thinks is weakest against it - depending on how smart it is.
That's not how crafting trompes works at all. They have their own construction rules. They're just incredibly underpriced for what you can do with them. It's also not the only ridiculous thing you can do in pathfinder if you follow the rules. As usual, the best defense between a table and ridiculous things is a good rapport between gm and players, and shared expectations. And maybe the occasional thrown book.
Are all constructs really automatically under the control of the creator? From the construct handbook: "Once the crafting process is complete, the resulting construct is ready to receive orders. A construct recognizes its creator intuitively and obeys all commands issued to it by that individual." That's regarding the craft construct feat, which is the feat used to create trompes. So, in this case, yes. Is there really no limit to the creatures that can be copied? From the template entry: “Trompe l’oeil” is an inherited template that can be added to any corporeal creature that has an Intelligence score (referred to hereafter as the base creature)." You're limited to corporeal creatures (sorry ghosts) that have an intelligence score (RIP vermin and unintelligent undead). Would copying yourself many times really be effective? Depending on your character build it might be more or less effective. If you're a 20th level wizard, well, having two thousand of those as minions is pretty useful. Do Trompe L’oeil really retain all supernatural and SLA abilities? As an inherited template, the only things you change on the base creature are what's noted in the template itself. The special qualities section only adds two abilities and does not mention removing any of the existing supernatural and SLA's the creature has, so the modified creature retains those. There are many things you can do in pathfinder according to raw that are silly when carried to extremes. This is one of them.
Well, I'm talking about reducing bonus types, not removing them entirely. Stacking would still be a thing, but I would like to make it somewhat simpler to remember. Profane and holy? That's divine now. Resistance is gone and that type is wrapped up into another category. I'm thinking inherent. I'd also want to move competence to inherent and remove competence as a type. Racial bonuses are now untyped bonuses. (and reincarnation would already be getting a rework). This would be happening in conjection with the other reworks to make sure none of the standard things would be unduly effected. The list is just longer than it needs to be to do what it needs to do. There's space to consolidate without significantly altering the stacking game. Still plenty of bonus types to stack, but more trim of a list. For the non-standard races stuff, I'm talking about magic item slots, how many limbs can be used for weapons, twf with greatswords, wielding two longbows in four arms... basically standardizing the mechanics so they apply equally to unusual and monstrous races. This doesn't prevent a race from bringing along an explicit ability, but would remove some questions that pop up when you start adding extra arms, tentacles, or legs to your character.
1. Combat maneuvers in general, grapple most definitely. Simplification and clarification is needed. 2. Stealth and senses. Stealth rules could use a good scrubbing. 3. Mundane crafting vs magical crafting. Crafting skills need to be more useful, crafting feats less so, and the margin between a purchase and crafted item not so wide. 4. Consolidation of bonus types. There's more than needed, and it leads to stacking issues. 5. Unification of phrasing. There are a lot of effects with similar but not-quite-the-same phrasing. It's an editing pass. 6. Bring back the prestige classes. I love 'em, I miss 'em, I want more decently balanced prestige classes. 7. Reworking some of the classes. Spontaneous casters gain spells at the same levels as prepared casters. Gunslingers (and firearms in general) get a rework. I don't feel a class feature should have a chance of blowing up whenever you use it. I'd remove the misfire chance entirely, and rework guns to target touch ac against light armored foes and regular ac against anything wearing medium or heavy armor. Alchemists could use a little integration with magic and, you know, not killing allies with mis-thrown splash weapons. Some others could get looked over. 8. Changing feats and the approach to feat content in expansion books. Instead of, say, improved disarm as a feat, you'd take a feat that granted you a handful of the improved feats. This is similar to the feat tax stuff so far. But the other thing I would do is set those up as category feats. So when a future book came out with, 'cool new weapon-based cmb thing' you could add it to 'improved weapon cmb' feat by spending a bit of gold on training equipment. Making martial content a bit more comparable to spellcasters and spells. 9. Basic definitions stuff for non-standard races. We all know it'll get weird sooner or later. 10. Rework the balance between weapons and natural attacks. Actually, on that note... 11. Bestiary needs some reworking, more variation of ac types, formatting stuff, and some different categorization. I'd be tempted to also add something like a scalable stat chart and a random list of special abilities split up by cr ranges so you could more easily roll actual unique creatures. *rolls some dice* "Martial, melee, here are the default stats and... this one is going to have an extra +4 to strength, a grab attack with constrict, and once per round it can attempt to stun one target as a free action" 12. I'd tweak carryweight to make it a bit more generous particularly at lower strength scores. 13. Spell effects. Oh, spell effects... *sigh* Consolidating bonus types would help a lot. All of the 'intense calculations required' type spells would get a rewrite. Some effects would be simplified, I'd DEFINITELY add in some greater magic missiles and magic missile storms, consolidate some of them as appropriate, super rework 'summoning' spells to make them simpler to use without a ton of cross referencing, and so on. 14 Magic items, and magic item crafting would get a rework. I'd like to see how a module system would work instead of a formula list for crafting, but it'd eat up more space and might not be any better. Might be nice to simplify the types a bit and have 'special ability' modules that could be added to 'statistics' items. Like, for example, you have a +4 str belt. You could add one special ability module to that, whether it's the dastardly 3 times a day dimension door, the spiderclimb ability, or the ability to force an enemy to reroll a crit once a day. This is kind of like the automatic progression, but not quite as big of a difference. Anyways, it sounds like a lot of significant changes, but it'd still feel like pathfinder at the end.
Have a trusted character with a good charisma use Dominate on everyone with a command along the lines of, "Act as you would normally". Then if a character is dominated by the vampire, it falls into opposed charisma checks. It's another layer in case you don't have protection from evil up when you need it. Detect magic should tell you if the npc still has a lingering dominate effect. If that is the case, it's in your best interests to remove that effect with dispel magic - preferably without alerting the npc that you have discovered the secret. You may want to wait until they're asleep to get the jump on them and knock them unconscious/pin and tie them up first. Another option - more defensive - would be to set up a way to breathe underwater. (bottle of air, air tablets, whatever) and then camp in or around a moving body of water. Travel via boat if possible. Running water is especially dangerous for a vampire and may convince them to leave you alone. Never, ever separate. Gotta use the loo? Too bad. A vampire is powerful alone, but may be accompanied by many vampire spawn. Finally, and this is a bit mercenary, ask yourself how much you really care about your level drained ally. If the vampire wants him for a specific reason, find that reason out, then if the vampire comes calling just offer him up like a slab of beef. He who lives and runs away and all that. An angry vampire can elude you indefinitely while dominating people all night long and sending them after your party. Don't engage unless you absolutely have to or until you're powerful enough that you're no longer concerned.
Ok. I'm going to use the archives of nethys and paizo sources. The archives of nethys is the official PRD for pathfinder. Announcement. The pathfinder rules apply to pathfinder society except where a pathfinder society resource specifically notes otherwise. You can also see some of the society specific rules there. Additionally, faq's and errata are binding for PFS. With that established, let's break it down. Luckily, we can reference that section on the archives - and it'll be the most updated rules as well. Back to the class page. Here, we need to reference the chart shown under class features. Here you can see that at level 1, the oracle only has 1st level spells per day. This is important because it feed up into what we've already looked at. The oracle only gets those bonus spell slots from a high ability score if they have a high enough class level to cast spells or use spell slots of that level. At level one, the class level is only providing cantrips and 1st level slots. Because the class level is only providing 1st level spell slots at the highest, they can not use anything above 1st level spell slots. They won't receive their 2nd level spell slots (and thus be able to benefit from the bonus 2nd level spell slots from a high ability score) until they reach fourth level in oracle. Now, we can look at that faq everyone has been tossing around. "No. You only get the bonus spells if your class level grants you access to those spell levels. You can't even use them for lower-level spells. See page 16, Abilities and Spellcasters section: "In addition to having a high ability score, a spellcaster must be of a high enough class level to be able to cast spells of a given spell level. " For example, a 1st-level wizard with 18 Intelligence has (according to table 1–3: Ability Modifiers and Bonus Spells) 1 bonus spell at spell levels 1, 2, and 3. However, he can only use the 1st-level bonus spell because as a 1st-level wizard he only has access to 1st-level spells (his class-based number of 2nd- and 3rd-level spells per day are "—", meaning "no access to spells of this level"). As soon as he becomes a 3rd-level wizard, he gains access to his 2nd-level spell slots and can use that bonus 2nd-level spell slot from his high Intelligence, and likewise for 3rd-level spells and bonus spells at wizard level 5. Basically, ignore the columns for higher-level spells on table 1–3: Ability Modifiers and Bonus Spells until your class grants you access to those spell levels." It's a big chunk of text, but let's break it down a bit. "You only get the bonus spells if your class level grants you access to those spell levels." This reinforces what I showed above. "However, he can only use the 1st-level bonus spell because as a 1st-level wizard he only has access to 1st-level spells (his class-based number of 2nd- and 3rd-level spells per day are "—", meaning "no access to spells of this level")." This sentence is actually very important. It's telling you how to interpret the table - sections with those dashes mean no access to spells of this level. Since the oracle at first level has dashes through all the 2nd to 9th level entries (reference my earlier screenshot) they have no access to spells of those levels. Because they don't have access to those spell levels through their class they can't use the bonus spells from having a high ability score for those slots. Combine it together and you have your answer. Hopefully, the step-by-step here is helpful to you. :)
I would say that, for the wearer, it functions in all ways as though they're wearing mithral breastplate. In this case, the ooze is turning into armor, and providing protection as though it were a mithral breastplate. It doesn't specifically remove any of the normal aspects of wearing armor which, if it did, would be specifically called out. Since it lacks a specific exception, and "provides protection as" doesn't automatically refer only to armor bonus, or exclude the other armor aspects, you should be taking armor check penalty, spell failure, max dex bonus, and so on as appropriate for a mithril breastplate.
Here's the bit about emotion components: "Emotion Components: Emotion components represent a particular emotional state required to cast the spell. A psychic spellcaster marshals her desire in order to focus and release the spell’s energy. It is impossible to cast a spell with an emotion component while the spellcaster is under the influence of a non-harmless effect with the emotion or fear descriptors. Even if the effect’s emotion matches the necessary emotion to cast the psychic spell, the spellcaster is not in control of her own desires and animal impulses, which is a necessary part of providing an emotion component." Also this tidbit: "If a spell’s components line lists a somatic component, that spell instead requires an emotion component when cast by psychic spellcasters" Your gm has, apparently, decided that grief has bestowed upon you an effect with the emotion or fear descriptor. Your technical options are:
Your 'talk to the dm' options are:
Your 'snark a.f. options are:
The only thing you're missing in making this work like that is any language that would make it work like that. 'A' is not 'every', 'A' is not any. Stop trying to add words. It gives you one tail attack. It would need more language than it has to be one tail attack per tail. Like, you know, 'per tail'.
Much like a standard wizard who decided to don fullplate and a tower shield and then tried to cast fireball, they would end up regretting that decision. A level three character has, for the purposes of accomplished sneak attacker, a cap of 2d6. Half the level (1.5) rounded up (2). In this case, that means the feat would be a poor choice for their build. In other news, boon companion is ineffective if you're a single classed druid with an animal companion. Sap adept and sap master are ineffective if you never use a bludgeoning weapon. Shade of the Uskwood is detrimental if you're not playing a druid. The game is littered with feats that are potentially useless if not used in the right build - and some of them even penalize you.
I'm going to miss a few things. First, the sense that paizo valued their core playerbase. Paizo won't even put one guy on releasing p1 content? They can't even do one book a year? Come on. That's a huge middle finger to the core base that followed them for an improved 3.5 - not a virtually new and very different system. I'm going to miss the excitement of cracking open a new pdf and starting to read through it. P2 is incredibly unappealing to me, especially the action changes, the segregation of basic common abilities, the multiclassing, and the lack of backward compatibility. So I won't be buying any new hard copies or pdfs for the foreseeable future. On that note I'm also going to miss avoiding 3pp content. With official content ending its inevitable that most p1 groups will slowly incorporate more and more homebrew / 3pp content. I'm also going to miss the already limited amount of errata and faqs the p1 system received. It's very likely that any unanswered questions will remain that way forever now. *sigh*
The prerequisite is just that - a prerequisite. Not a statement of how a feat works or any limitation on what is affected by the benefits of the feat. Guided hand, for example, doesn't only work when you're channeling energy despite requiring channel energy as a prerequisite. That's a very basic fact of how feats work. They do what they say they do. Nothing more, nothing less.
The feat has this line: "Your number of sneak attack dice cannot exceed half your character level (rounded up)." Really look at that. It doesn't say, 'Due to this feat.' or 'From this ability.' or anything like that Your sneak attack just can't go any higher. It creates a hard cap. A seventh level character would be capped at a total of four sneak attack dice and that number couldn't be raised by spells or magic items.
Given the faq on the true strike infusion, you should be able to make an extract of it just fine. Relevant text from alchemist: "Although the alchemist doesn’t actually cast spells, he does have a formulae list that determines what extracts he can create." This section suggests you ignore the focus requirement. "Extracts cannot be made from spells that have focus requirements (alchemist extracts that duplicate divine spells never have a divine focus requirement)." Relevant text from the faq: "Can I use the infusion discovery to create an infused extract of a personal-range formula (such as true strike), which someone else can drink?
Also, accelerated drinker cannot be used to drink an extract. Relevant text: "Alchemist: Does the Accelerated Drinker feat from Cheliax, Empire of Devils allow a character to drink an alchemist extract as a move action?
http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fn#v5748eaic9qv1 In short, the combo doesn't work as desired because you cannot drink an extract of true strike as a move action, and there are no potions of true strike.
Just as a suggestion, why don't you poke around in the dpr olympics thread? It might help develop your appreciation for what character builds can really do. While you're poking through the characters, consider that there has been several years of new content not represented there that would push all those numbers up. http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kac7&page=1?The-DPR-Olympics-or-Im-not-the -mechanic-here http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2mhpi&page=1?The-DPR-Summer-Olympics-or-Wha t-are-we
That's not how it works. There's nothing that says power attack can't also be used to add 200 damage to every attack. It doesn't do that because pathfinder isn't a game where all the options have to be excluded. In order to do something you need a rule that says you can do it. Drugs can't be used as poisons because there are no rules that say you can use them in that manner. If you want to try to apply, "nothing says they can't either" then I could similarly apply, "nothing says your enemies can't just choose to ignore the effects of drugs either". That said, as long as your gm is aware that they're not poisons and still allows you to use them as such, it's not a problem.
Was that a requirement? I thought it was 'be aware of the attack' and not 'be aware of WHO is being attacked'. It's not an attack until the arrow is fired at someone/thing. Pulling back a bowstring isn't an attack. Actually, thinking about it, even releasing a bowstring isn't an attack unless you've knocked an arrow and are making an attack roll. So, if you want to go all out here, hearing the bowstring being pulled back, hearing an arrow being knocked, and hearing the bowstring twang as it's released isn't proof of an attack. You need to be able to perceive, in some way, that the arrow is aimed at you and fired at you. Sound alone won't do that. Or. more reasonably, if you can't perceive the exact location of the arrow as it flies through the air you can't cut it in half.
Ignoring the identifying the clone as a clone part, there are a few potential problems here. First off, regardless of the implanted memories, as soon as Bob wakes up he might go, "What the hell was I thinking! I don't want to help the cult! Oh god, Alice!!!" Second off, if the corpse doesn't come with the appropriate magical gear, that might raise suspicions. Third off, with raise dead so prevalent at the levels where you can cast clone, it would probably be trivial to verify whether or not Alice is actually dead. Fourth off, speak with dead spell.
I dunno... It just seems kind of evil to, you know, use an engine that slices up existence... Like, that next shred might be part of someone's liver, or a unique piece of art, or part of an engine that's keeping a star from exploding. It's like driving a car that fires a bullet in a random direction every time you get on the highway.
Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our booksGood thought Magicdealer! I'm a big fan of this perspective, and we try to do this when we see something that's an obvious issue in that direction as well, but those tend to be less visible because the original option was usually weak, so no one really remembered it. Cunning, for instance, was a terrible purchase in the 1st printing even if your character was already going to have 5 ranks in Knowledge skills because it was still worse than just getting another +1. The new cunning is actually really nice for a crit-focused smartypants character (perhaps a shocking grasp magus who can get the enhancement bonus in other ways), but it hasn't gotten more than one mention so far (by an extremely thorough poster who went through every item as a line item) and it'll take a while for builds to start including it. I'm excited to see it show up more often and am considering it for my falcata-wielding lore warden fighter in PFS. So then, I guess the question is whether or not the total reduction in useful book options is offset by the total increase in useful book options. I'm not trying to be negative or insulting. The work that paizo has done with pathfinder overall has been amazing. Everything from the beginning reworking of the basic classes, to the addition of new, flavorful classes, to archetypes, and on through the mythic and unchained content has been great to see, and I've spent hundreds of hours pouring over the content and working and reworking characters. It's not like I haven't gotten my money's worth :p It's just this one, little area that regularly frustrates me. The change you mentioned for cunning is a useful change, but it doesn't really open up new or different character types. In return, this errata removed mistmail builds, conductive builds, ring of revelation builds... well, I could go on but this thread is full of examples. These are items that people could, and did, create entire character designs around. They provided unique, and interesting abilities. In comparison, a flat +4 bonus to confirmation rolls doesn't really match up. Now, I understand that some things need to be fixed. I'm not arguing that. But maybe there are ways to do so that keep them interesting. Take the Jingasa for example. What if, instead of making the critical negation a once ever thing, it had been changed to this: "Once per day, when struck by a critical hit or sneak attack, the wearer can spend an immediate action to delay the effects of the critical hit or sneak attack for one minute." It's still useful, and useful daily, but now it requires more tactical use and possibly some hilarious last second scrambling for temporary hitpoints and such. Heck, you could drop the time delay lower and still have it useful. I mean, obviously I'm not a game designer so there are probably plenty of examples as to why this would be a bad change. Yet I can also envision a meta build using the delay and a friend with a kukri to set off some interesting on-damage events. But this is a good example for the sorts of changes that I'd prefer to see. If there's an item that paizo thinks is too good, or too useful, instead of burning it to the ground it would be nice to see it reworked when possible to still allow for characters to be built around it. That way, we're not losing build variety or diversity when these changes come out. I half-expect though that if someone tossed out something comparable to the jingasa rework I suggested, someone else would want to use it in a new book as a new item since new books are where paizo's operating budget comes from :D And I get that, too. If paizo doesn't make money, then we don't get any more pathfinder updates. But it leaves me saddened because I expect that's the reason errata releases will continue as they have been.
I'm pretty disappointed by the changes as well. Errata should be an opportunity to correct the wording on things that aren't functioning properly, or to correct obvious mistakes. Not as an avenue to weaken or completely rewrite items, feats, and so on. These erratas rarely end up making options stronger, unless that option simply didn't function in the first place. It's starting to feel like paizo is sticking these stronger, attractive items into their books in order to entice the item hunter/optimizer crowd and then removing those things in order to make their next release more attractive. I'm not really going all paranoid conspiracy hat here. I don't think that's what is really going on. But that's what it's starting to feel like. It's disappointing to me when I realize that a particular book is less valuable to me after errata than it was pre-changes. And it's happened multiple times. I've lost count of the number of actual characters I've had to retire because of errata or faq changes, not to mention the characters that have never gotten past the concept phase because they've been errata'd away before I got a chance to play them. If there was one thing I could request from the paizo team here, it would be to make as many positive changes as negative ones. If you want to burn the jingasa to the ground, go for it. But in return add something interesting and USEFUL to another item. Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our books, when you're going through and weakening or destroying options in them. Give me a reason to look at the release of errata as something to be excited about, instead of the day more character builds will die. Just sayin'...
Yeah. It seems like a lot of folks dislike fast healing. There are a billion reasons why a hunter would kill their animal companion, and a billion more why they wouldn't choose to replace it. Heck, probably more than that. Roleplaying can justify a lot. But roleplaying isn't needed to justify anything here. There aren't any rules preventing this from working. Just people who don't like it and who plan on punishing their players if their players like it. If you hate it so much, toss a ban on it in your houserules, along with summoners, mindchemists, disable device, diplomacy, stats over 16, skill bonuses over 10, and any weapon that isn't simple. But house rules aren't relevant in the rules forum.
You need more than that to prove it. When you take the position to declare something new in contradiction to a long-accepted assumption, the proof of burden IS on you. Sorry. It is absolutely reasonable to ask you to prove that a wisdom bonus is actually referring to a specific subset of rules about bonus types for the purposes of stacking, rather than just using the terms bonus, penalty, and modifier interchangeably. I've already shown several places where bonus follows another word where it's pretty obviously not meant to declare a bonus type. It's not an overly skeptical to ask you to provide evidence that a wisdom bonus refers to typed bonuses for stacking purposes when there's obvious evidence that not everything that follows (something) (bonus) format is a bonus type. But if you don't feel like doing it, then don't. *shrug* We ALL know that the devs will read through the thread, their eyes slowly glazing over at the repeated arguments, before having a discussion about how each side would affect the longer view of the game system. In reality, declaring ability scores to be bonus types will require a lot of additional rulings for the game system to hold together. The one I've seen thrown about is con bonuses and hitpoints, but I'd expect issues to start popping up like weeds. So I don't expect to see ability scores being recognized as bonus types any time soon.
As an aside, I took a quick look through my pdf of the core rulebook for other words connected to the word bonus. We have: base attack bonus (that'd suck if it didn't stack)
I stopped at the top of page 34, out of 575 pages. The point I'm making here is that just because the word bonus follows another word doesn't mean that the word that precedes it is a type of bonus, or the source of a bonus. You need more than that to prove it. And, in the case of ability scores, nothing so far in these discussions has made wisdom bonus look more like a bonus type than a governs bonus.
This isn't really a rules question but -- I'd go with the feat granting you the ability to conceal the normal obvious usage of magic. For what it's worth, I think if spellcasters could cast whatever they wanted and be able to use stealth to conceal it, it would be significantly unbalancing to the game world. And it's not like caster's aren't pretty unbalancing to it already :D
Rushley... if you're complaining about power gamers, you're in the wrong forum, my friend. On reading the relevant passages, I think that the intent of the ability is to allow the brawler to use whichever damage value is most beneficial. Also, given the line about not affecting any other aspect of the weapon, I believe the damage comparison and choice is limited to the base weapon damage, before magical effects. A spiked shield isn't a magical enhancement, but rather a specific type of weapon. It's listed as such on the paizo srd. (http://paizo.com/prd/equipment.html) So I'd say you could either use the spiked shield damage, or the unarmed strike damage. After choosing your base, you would then apply bashing to increase the damage dice from there.
I think that the assumption has been made that initiative begins at 300ft away, where the telepathy and unspeakable presence kicks in. If that assumption changes, then execution becomes much trickier. Let's assume, for example, that initiative begins a thousand feet out. After the time stop ends, the Nalfeshnee will not be close enough to trigger the runes. And here's something else interesting that I noticed. Cthulhu has triple treasure and the craft wondrous item feat. I don't see any reason why the majority of that loot wouldn't be items he'd forged at cost for himself. Why have the feat if he doesn't use it? It's in the stat block, so it must be intended. Anyone want to deck Cthulhu out with appropriate amount of silly gear?
As per the earlier quote, "many traits" does not mean all traits. While the two traits do provide a bonus for the character, it is not a typed bonus, which means that it stacks. Had the traits listed that the effect should be considered a "trait bonus", then you'd have an argument.
You could get equally cute. Ahem... Magical Hat of Disguise:
Boots of striding and springing:
ect... with a smirk.
Cheese time, because cheese is delicious. Human Ninja (scout).
feat Sap Adept, feat Intimidating Prowess, Ninja Trick Offensive Defense, Feat sap master, ninja trick weapon focus (unarmed strike), Feat Enforcer, Ninja trick Combat Trick Shatter Defenses 1Feat (Human) Sap Adept, Feat Enforcer
Start alchemist(vivisectionist) levels
You've got a scout charge that gives you a high bonus to your ac, making it much MUCH less dangerous to risk a full attack. Of course, if you miss you'll probably not pop up very high on the threat meter (sans metagaming of course). By the end, you've got three attacks from your main hand, two attacks from your off hand, two attacks from medusa's wrath, two claw attacks, a bite attack, and an attack from your ki pool for eleven attacks. I should note here that you're probably making all your normal attacks with knees and an amulet of mighty fists enchanted with agile for that extra bang. You get normal sneak attack progression the whole way through, and a bunch of things that add goodies to your damage. Depending on your dm, offensive defense will either make your ac stupidly high, or REALLY stupidly high. At 20th level, you'll be dealing 1d3 with your unarmed strike, with 10d6 sneak attack damage. Sap master rolls it up to 20d6 sneak attack. Depending on how you read sap adept, you're either dealing a bonus 20 or 40 damage.
20d6 is worth an average of 70 damage. So each attack is looking at an average damage range of 110 to 150 depending on your interpretation of the feats.
Toss in that mutagen, and you're looking at an expanded range of 1210 to 1650 damage.
Against anything immune to nonlethal damage, you're stuck dealing 1d3+10d6, or just 1d3 if it's immune to sneak attack damage as well. It's really an all or nothing build. Either you devastate your enemy, or your enemy devastates you. Toss in some variety amulets of mighty fists for fun and profit. One with brilliant energy could be useful much of the time... if somewhat odd, at least for when hitting is an issue. Sub out with the agile +4 version if you're facing something you can't hit with brilliant body parts. The agile enchant itself will probably be worth 13ish damage per hit at level 20. So I guess the real maximum range is closer to 1793. You'll notice that some of the feats are... perhaps not the best optimized. I ran out of abilities to stack with the unarmed damage, so I just popped in filler here and there. Improve away if you can. As a side note, possibly dealing 22 strength damage each round is just fun.
Heh, I see a fighter (monk) archetype coming down the road. At first level, the monk gains Improved Unarmed Strike. This replaces the fighter first level feat. At second level, the monk gains Two weapon fighting. This replaces the fighter second level feat. At second level, the monk may apply his wisdom bonus in addition to his dexterity bonus to ac, but only while wearing no armor. This ability replaces the bravery class feature. At third level, the monk gains a bonus to speed. This bonus starts at +10 at 3rd level, and improves by an additional ten at 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, and 18th for a total bonus of +60 at 18th level. This ability replaces the armor training class feature. At fourth level, the monk gains a ki pool. Ki pool information yadda yadda yadda, the extra attack from using a ki point does not stack with haste. This ability replaces the 4th level bonus feat. At fifth level, the monk gains weapon training, but may only select the monk weapon group. At when a fighter would normally gain an additional weapon group, he may increase his bonus with the monk weapon group as normal, but may not select any additional weapon groups. At sixth level, the monk gains improved two weapon fighting. This replaces the 6th level fighter bonus feat. ect. as necessary to keep balance. The whole spell resistance thing can be dropped, I think. I definitely prefer the fighter capstone to the current monk capstone :D
Well, most people look at monk and see "flurry of blows, awesome!" Then they really start looking into it. With flurry of blows, either you have major trouble with your fists keeping up with an enchanted weapon, or you lose out on your unarmed damage. Where does that leave you? You can attack like a two-weapon fighter, but without the weapon training, the armor training, or the bonus feats. You add wisdom to ac, but you can't wear armor. Your ac will be harder to maintain, meaning you have fewer points to stack into your attacking ability score (str or dex). Also, unless you're flurrying, you're using medium bab. As a tradeoff, you get increased ground movement speed, a handful of not so great abilities, and the ki pool. The ki pool is cool, but again not great. The dodge bonus is nice, but 1 round isn't very long. The extra attack often doesn't stack with haste (depends on your gm). And more speed is mostly unimportant when you have plenty of speed already. In a fighter comparison, it comes down to what you would rather have. Full bab all the time, the ability to focus on one stat, 11 extra feats, +4 from mastery to hit with your chosen weapons, ability to wear full plate and still have the potential of getting ac from dex all the way to a 20 point dex, full movement while wearing armor, and a nice keystone ability. Or full bab only while flurrying, lower hps and more skills, more stats to worry about, evasion, reduced fall damage, better acrobatics checks, disease and poison immunity, spell resistance (which by the way is a standard action to lower, so it interferes with beneficial spells as well), the possible ability to kill a creature days later after fighting it, age penalties negated, the ability to speak with any living creature, some use of etherealness, and a keystone that makes you more vulnerable instead of less. Now, the things you get from the fighter can all stack with magical bonuses, like bonuses to hit from magical weapons. The monk bonuses can mostly be replaced via gear, in a non-stacking manner. You can't get more ability to talk to any creature, for example. The monk deals about the same amount of damage as a cleric that took the twf chain. The cleric can cast spells to reproduce many of the monk abilities, and to render the others unnecessary. And all the other spells that clerics get. The monk deals less damage than the fighter, but looks like he should be a melee combatant. It makes the role of the monk very unspecific. He can't hit the armored guy, but he doesn't have the feats to go anti-caster like the fighter can. He's not a casting class either. So, what is his role? The rogue does better damage, with the same chance to hit, and has utility as a trap finder. The monk is not as good as other melee classes at meleeing, he's not as good an anti-caster even built for it as a fighter can be. The only thing he has over most combatants is mobility. At least, until flight comes into play. Poor monk :D
Honestly, from my point of view, it looks like the main issue you have with this player is that his character is more effective than yours in the same areas. With a min/maxer in the party, the best thing you can do to avoid this in the future is just to mention it to him. I often min/max my characters... though I usually have three or four pages of character background as well. When I roll up a character for a new campaign, I discuss my role and the role of the other party members as I decide what kind of character to play. This is so I can avoid problems with making someone else's character feel unnecessary. People hate it if you do something better than they can. If you do something well that they can't do at all... well they tend to be a lot happier. If you're playing an upfront meleer, then just ask the min/maxer not to make a character that fills that particular role. It's certainly understandable that you would be feeling frustrated over this. Alternatively, you could choose to create a new character that fills a different role, so you're not in direct competition with this player. Unfortunately, the only other thing you could really do would be to put in the effort to min/max better than he does. I don't think that's what you're really looking to do here.
The section posted is in the rulebook, and part of the rules. It very explicitly gives the dm permission to ignore rolls if he/she thinks that the game will be more entertaining by doing so. I always find it amusing when people are self contradicting. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it stops being a rule. Here, allow me to post another excerpt from that section. Page 403, Rolling Dice. Rolling Dice: Some GMs prefer to roll all of their dice in front of the players, letting the results fall where they may. Others prefer to make all the rolls behind a screen, hiding the results from the PCs so that, if they need to, they can fudge the dice results to make the game do what they want. Neither way is the "correct" way; choose whichever you wish, or even mix and match as feels right for you. Or maybe you'd prefer another quote. Page 396.
Another one? Page 402
And, again, you seem to be missing the distinction between a dm willing to adjust values on the fly, and a bad dm. You keep talking about things that a bad dm might do. Guess what? That bad dm can follow the rules exactly and make things 10 times more unbalanced and unfun for his players. A good gm, however, can use the powers explicitly granted to him in order to change a boring encounter into something entertaining and fun for his players. But let's talk a moment about that last sentence of yours. "coming up with new ones designed to hinder your players dispite the abilities they have and the rolls that they make." Guess what? There's a section on that. It's called a house rule, and is something explicitly allowed by the core rule book. A good gm can use it to add more fun to the game, where a bad gm will use it to add nothing, or to take fun away. I'll also add that while you use the word hinder, the option can just as easily be used to enhance, improve, or challenge the players. How it is used is dependent on whether you have a good dm or a bad one.
Try page 402 of the core rulebook. Actually, I'll just paste it here. Cheating and Fudging: We all know that cheating is bad. But sometimes, as a GM, you might find yourself in a situation where cheating might improve the game. We prefer to call this "fudging" rather than cheating, and while you should try to avoid it when you can, you are the law in your world, and you shouldn't feel bound by the dice. The section goes on, but I think that is sufficient.
Ehh... how do you know they're low level orcs? Or prepared enemies who've got nondetection on their gear to take you by surprise. Ect. Heck, one of my favorite thing to do is to use an image of, say, an orc, and use the stats for, say, a troll. It helps a lot when people are familiar enough with monsters to call out abilities and stats at the table. Give me your knowledge roll, I'll tell you what you know about this creature. The dm totally can't be called out for cheating, because he can't cheat. Everything he does in the game world can be explained either before and after the fact. There's only one thing you can call the dm out for. Running a game that isn't fun. And if you're not having fun, let the dm know. That's the dm's job, and why he gets to bypass all this cheating stuff. I've adhoc'd stuff dozens if not hundreds of times on the fly to make things more interesting and fun for my party. |
