Mechalibur's page

Jim Groves wrote:

Cyrad wrote:

I'm also worried that this module will "wussify" dragons. Of course, there's more than one way to defeat a foe than fight them, but if that's how the dragon is defeated...

I would count on the author Mike Shel to deliver a satisfying conclusion.

The dragon, an aficionado of Taldan high culture, agrees to cease his depredations if the party can get him season tickets to the Oppara Opera House.

However, getting those tickets is an incredible challenge.

Wussified, indeed.

And then the difficult task of convincing the opera house manager to allow a dragon to attend, and figuring out the logistics of getting a grown dragon good seating.

It's a challenge unlike any you've faced before. :P

I'm interested in mythic NPC stats! Well, mostly because my players' high level characters have expressed an active interest in conquering other nations...

And oh man, I so VERY much want to see what Paizo has done with the Young character rules. I'm super hoping that it expands on the Age Category rules and doesn't just say something like, "Here's a template for you!"

That's actually exactly what I'm hoping they do. And that the template is all-negative (or that the benefits are relatively minor, like diplomacy boosts or something).

It sounds bad when I say it like that, but what I'm hoping is that it's never advantageous to be a child in a dangerous situation. Adults (age 15+ for humans) should just be better than children, in my opinion. Of course, even if it's entirely disadvantageous, players could still elect to play children, just as you're allowed to play an amputee if you really want, or use less than your point buy.

Name: Calwethna Udrinor
Race: Drow
Class/levels: Cavalier 16 (Musketeer)

Adventure: Post-Game
Location: The Doomsday Door
Catalyst: Yamasoth

Back in part 4, in order to avoid Yamasoth's stun, Calwethna decided to accept chaos in her heart. Since she started as NE, this turned her into chaotic evil, and a servant of Yamasoth. I didn't want to delay the campaign, so I decided that Yamasoth would take advantage of this later.

After completing the campaign, Calwethna found herself drawn toward Windsong Abbey (the party decided not to re-built the town.) There, Calwethna met a cleric of Yamasoth who was told by his qlippoth lord that a servant would meet him there. Calwethna guarded the cleric while he made his way through the Abbey, opening the doomsday locks with her key, and killing Kandamereus who they let watch over the gate back in part 4.

The party, wondering where Calwethna had gone to, decided to scry on her, and were surprised when they found out she was helping a cleric of Yamasoth finish the ritual to summon Yamasoth that was barely prevented in part 4. While the ritual was commencing, the party wizard, Isil, teleports everyone in (thankfully that bypasses the need for another doomsday key), and realizing that Calwethna is under the control of Yamasoth, they kill her and the cleric in order to prevent the ritual.

The wizard is greatly saddened by this, but decides not to revive Calwethna, as she would likely just be under Yamasoth's control again. Isil instead vows that she will kill Yamasoth herself if she has to.

Luckily, I have his stats handy >:)

On the Pathfinder page (http://paizo.com/pathfinder), I noticed it still says that the Pathfinder Companion line is bi-monthly, when that's been upped to monthly. Any chance this could get corrected?

Can't wait until the rulebook is released! From what I've heard, this looks very interesting.

Doesn't the obedience need to be done every day? Damn, that's a lot of evil-doer slaying.

Brian E. Harris wrote:

Contrasted, Paizo and GitP target a niche audience. The userbase of sites like these tend to be far more engaged in the subject matter, and have a higher level of participation.

This.

I think a site with a broad, general appeal will get more lurkers. It would not surprise me if users of a board like Paizo or GitP were far more engaged.

Could either of you give an example of a more general forum than giantitp or paizo? As I understand it, the whole point of a forum is usually to bring a specific group of people together to communicate about a shared interest. Every forum I've been to, the membership numbers just don't add up with the people who would have had to viewed it for the .002% statistic to be accurate. Something Awful, which not only has a cost to join and covers a wide range of topics, would need over 8 billion of the population to have seen the website at one point.

I'm not disagreeing that a more general forum would have viewer members per viewers, but .002% is absolutely ridiculous. Even in the most general case, I imagine the number would be much closer to .02%, or ten times the original percentage.

Players are funny like that sometimes.

Sounds like you are really close to the finish line. When you are done with the AP, it would be nice to see a more detailed report from you on how it all worked out, which individual adventures work best and why, and what GMs should be awere of starting this AP. Reading AP completion reports is always interesting.

P.S, don't forget a detialed report of the fight against Xin! ;)

Surprisingly, no one died against Xin (or Ogonthunn afterword). The Sihedron is extremely powerful... I might do a write up later about my thoughts on the AP.

I don't believe .002% at all. Let's do some math on that...

That means for every fifty thousand people who look at a forum, one person posts. I don't know how many people are on these forums, but let's say around a thousand (I'm sure it's more than that). That would mean about 50 million people have viewed this forum. I'm not even sure that many people around the world play Pathfinder. And that's just active members; I'm sure this forum has plenty more members who have made at least a single post.

Lets look at another forum... one that I have more info on. Giant in the playground has over 67,000 members. Let's say 50,000 of them have made at least one post and aren't bots. That would mean 2.5 billion people have viewed the page in their lives. That's over 33% of the world.

Giant in the Playground also has around 150,000 people who view it per day (information courtesy of Project Wonderful). That would translate to 3 active members on any given day, while the real number is almost certainly in the hundreds, if not thousands.

TL;DR: Don't trust any statistics you see on cracked.com.

Spanky/heathhansson, in my non-canonical skymetal article, I hinted at the idea of inubrix ammunition being found in Silver Mount. I think it'd be easy enough to craft inubrix ammo if you have some (and with the prices listed in the first AP volume, you could hypothetically buy some in a big enough marketplace). Personally, I love the idea. So get to it. :D

One note: with a pistol, musket, or blunderbuss, it would be less-than-ideal, unless for some reason you've got one made of non-metal (or at least non-ferrous metal). Everything else should be fine.

Of course, inubrix ammunition isn't particularly helpful for guns, since most of the time you ignore armor anyway.

Name: Isil Tassevenius
Race: Elf
Class: Wizard 15 (Thassilonian specialist)
Adventure: Dead Heart of Xin
Catalyst: Curiosity (or uncharacteristic carelessness)

Our elf walks into the shrine to Lissala, and resists the suggestion spell to pick up the robe that's covering the symbol of death. She was curious why the trap would want her to pick the robe up, so she decides to find out why, picking it up and triggering the Symbol of Death. She rolls a 1 on her save.

Luckily she had the Sihedron "equipped," so she was resurrected on the spot.

And right after she revives, she puts the robe on! Edit: Which is a cursed robe of powerlessness for those wondering.

Natch wrote:

Arbane the Terrible wrote:

Can a Witch take a level of Witch with a _different Patron_, to gain access to that Patron's spells?

Yes, it'd cost a caster level, but I'm getting mighty sick of undead.

...no? You can't even multiclass between archetypes, let alone into the exact same class.

Just a nitpick, you're right about classes but you can take multiple archetypes of the same class, as long as they don't change the same class features:

He said you can't multiclass between archetypes, not that you can't have multiple.

The Players' Guide does provide some guidance

"Ruthless Rivals: The Shattered Star Adventure Path
features a grab bag of classic monsters, so be ready for
anything! You’ll face many different creature types—
from vermin, humanoids, and fey at low levels to giants,
undead, constructs, aberrations, and evil outsiders at
higher levels."

This list is pretty accurate.

humanoid (human) is useful early on. A few of the adventures have fey creatures, and humanoid (giant) is pretty common in two of them. Undead and evil (outsider) are always solid choices, and there's no exception here. One surprising enemy type is construct. They have good representation in most of the adventures, but for one adventure in particular, they make up around half of the encounters.

And someone with a completely different opinion might have just as successful of a gaming group without any entitlement issues being brought up.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Kryzbyn wrote:

Its interesting that everything must be painted in it's worst possible light to make a winning argument.

That's because there is no winning argument.

Well, I think the winning argument is "It's a shared gaming experience and no one person should be dictating to others. Important decisions should be shared in advance and discussed as a group and the GM's primary role is to direct the story and be the referee during game play."

Well, people tend to think their own arguments are the winning ones. That's why we get so many people who post /thread in threads that mysteriously continue afterward.

One of our first gaming sessions, the barbarians gets hit by daze over and over again. "Don't daze me, bro!"

***

"I'm going to use fireball!"
"Wait, you might hit Endrin!"
"He's dead anyway if I don't kill the boss this round!"
*The dorm's fire alarm goes off*
"I told you not to use fireball!"

***

Politically Incorrect

If it's a group of new players, my first advice would be don't worry about the rules too much. When playing with people new to the game, I usually ignore certain rules like attacks of opportunity, concentration checks, prepared actions, and combat maneuvers, and instead gradually introduce them as the players progress.

Shattered Star has a very large number of combat encounters, possibly more than any other AP I've done. With a big group, this could slow things down considerably, so I recommend skipping some of the less interesting encounters, but giving the characters a bit more exp to compensate (or just have them level up at certain milestones).

One thing I've noticed about new players is that they often feel a bit clueless when they get to select a new feat on odd level ups. For that reason, it would probably be best if you had a handy short-list for good feat recommendations for certain classes.

I feel it significantly detracts from the ability to prepare and use the maps and hence run the adventure. I think I am entitled to my opinion and hope Paizo avoids deviating from the standard in the future.

Everything SHOULD fit in a 1 square = 5 feet grid. Once again, this is Pathfinder last I checked.

I posted this looking for an answer. I posted my review because *I* am very frustrated by what seems like a completely illogical inconsistency.

As I said, Paizo has used 1 square = 10 feet several times in the past (see AP #3 for example, the Hook Mountain Clanhold is 1 square = 10 feet). This isn't anything new, and it's never really bothered people before. I play online as well as in person, and I still don't find it an issue at all. If you're using a program like Maptools or something, you can pretty easily stretch it so that each square of the file map is 4 squares of the Maptools grid, but I don't know what program you're using.

It's not an inconsistency either. When the dungeon would be too big to fit on a map due to its size (comes up often when the primary inhabitants are giants or the like), they compensate by using a different scale. The writers don't just randomly decide to make every fourth map or so use a different scale for no reason.

So that the maps could fit on the pages...?

If they quadrupled the number of squares to make it 5feet, then the squares would be so small and compact it would be extremely difficult to make out the map.

I'm confused why you think that merits a 1 star review. It does nothing to detract from gameplay... it just means if you want to draw the map on a grid you just have to multiply everything by 2. That reminds me of the Curse of the Lady's Light review that gave it 1 star because it had bestiary 3 enemies.

This isn't the first time Paizo has done this, and it definitely won't be the last. Not everything fits nicely in a 1 square = five feet grid.

So inorder to play an adventure path that will in total retail somewhere in the the vicinity of $115 plus shipping I have to now buy an additional book that costs 40 bucks? After all I have already invested? These are great products, and I love supporting a game that has meant so much to me in my life as well as this wonderful little company that has shepherded it so well, but this is starting to feel a little like a money grab to me, at a time when discretionary spending is difficult for me and many others. Plus for some reason, demons are less intrinsically inspiring to me then some of their other concepts, like pirates and ice witches who plane walk in a chicken shack. But maybe that is just me. I am glad that I have a little time to consider if I want to move forward in this investment, and if I choose to step away, it will be with a heavy heart because I generally like the way this company works and thinks. We shall see.

I would hardly call it a money grab. That's like saying it's a money grab that Ultimate Magic/Combat had options for the ARG classes. Or that adventure paths use monsters from all 3 bestiaries.

All of this will be available for free on the PRD. That's about as far from money grabbing as you can get. And even if you're the kind of person that just has to get the hardcover for every rules supplement that's released, you can always just turn to one of Paizo's excellent 11 other adventure paths which don't require any mythic stuff at all.

There were on different planes (Axis and Elysium), and I rolled a d20 to see how dangerous the plane would be, which they got lucky with.

Unfortunately, the players weren't paying much attention when they started discussing the abilities of the shard in front of Xiavanshee. She has since implanted the proper ioun stone, which supresses the curse.

The wizard and musketeer were plane shifted to relatively safe locations, and did manage to re-group.

Name: Saran
Race: Aasimar
Class/Level: Paladin 13

Adventure: Into the Nightmare Rift
Loaction: Outside of Guiltspur
Catalyst: Betrayal

The fight against Cadrilkasta was intense, and wanting all the help they can get, the party enlists the help of Xiavanshee, much to Saran's chagrin. During the fight, the party is doing relatively well, until the musketeer fails her save against a prismatic spray, sending her to another plane. When the blue dragon is injured, her contingency spell activates, and a chase through Leng and Guiltspur ensues, the party using their spy eyes to track her movement. She manages to slow them down with her mirage special ability, and her azata summons (who also healed her). When they finally confront her for the last time outside of Guiltspur, a prepared prismatic spray sends the party wizard to another plane, leaving it down to Saran the paladin, Menelwyn the arcane archer, and Xiavanshee. Cadrilkasta manages to take Saran to the negatives, but is eventually slain with two full attacks from the drow and elf.

Then things get nasty. Xiavanshee takes the shard, knowing that Menelwyn can't do much to stop her, and slits her own throat with it, much to the arcane archer's surprise. Unfortunately, Melewyn can't do more than stabilize Saran (all the healing items were with the wizard), before Xiavanshee rises from the ground, and successfully uses her dominating gaze on Melewyn. Realizing that as an aasimar, Saran wouldn't be subject to the domination, she stabs him, takes his gear, and continues to the underdark, dominated elf in tow.

Xiavanshee is now a vampire with a dominated elf, and her 3 hunt mistresses still alive. She posseses two of the shards, the gear of two companions, and a dragon's horde. The party is in for a rough fight.

Got some new characters today, plus more to come throughout the week. Unlike many of their predecessors, all of these characters have seen play in our groups. Some are STILL seeing play. They are each contributed by my friends, who made them, and formatted by me to fit this thread's standards.

NEW CHARACTERS
Ogaro - 8th-level human brute, an urban barbarian known for raiding bars
Shin Takeru - 8th-level human spy, a foreign master of intelligence gathering

A bit of a late reply, but shouldn't Ogaro's Power Attack be -3 hit +3/6/9 damage at 8 BAB?

Well, let's work backward...

She's got 16/10/18/13/8/13. Let's say the human bonus is to CON, while her level up bonuses were 1 in STR and 1 in CON. That would put her initial spread as 15/10/15/13/8/13... which is 18. To make it 15 like most NPCs, we can just put her CHA to 10. Shouldn't really change much other than lowering her intimidate and handle animal by 1.

Name: Sato
Race: Tengu
Class/Level: Inquisitor 12

Adventure: Into the Nightmare Rift
Location: Throne Room
Catalyst: Failed attempt at heroism

The party wins initiative, and nearly kills the chief on the first turn. Sato decides he wants to finish the boss off, so he charges at the chief... and misses. Since he's the only one nearby, Jubbeck power attacks him, scoring a crit on his second attack, knocking poor Sato to -70hp.

Our arcane archer at this point has seen 3 tengus die horrible deaths (2 of which were in a past adventure), so she's really started to get unhinged at this point.

I go to Golarion for classic swords-and-sorcery/High Fantasy play, not steampunk. Steampunk typically brings along with it 18th- & 19th-Century Earth tropes or at least window-dressing, and while Golarion is not strictly "medieval" or "Renaissance" in setting, those are the influences most commonly associated with the game, its influences, and the setting to date.

See the way I see it, Paizo's goal with Golarion is to challenge the notion that every setting has to fill into distinct categories like medieval, swords & sorcery, steampunk, gothic, oriental, Lovecraftian, sword & planet, etc. I don't see myself as a Steampunk fan at all, but I am a fan of Alkenstar and firearms in Golarion. I love how the setting blurs these lines, and exposes people to a unique blend of fantasy influences.

And the most brilliant thing? If the GM doesn't like it, he doesn't have to include, and doesn't have to buy products like this. It's why I love roleplaying games, and Pathfinder in paticular.

The evil outsiders all appear distinct to me :/ Each subtype confers unique benefits, and the themes all feel appropriate.

This probably isn't the best place to discuss that, but that statement just seemed a bit odd to me.

Anyway, definitely interested for this module. Sounds like one that will be a bit difficult for casters to get through.

homosexual treant

[Insert hard wood joke here]

*Shrug*

And I want a half-orc paladin. Oh well. There will always be more possible characters than figures to represent them.

Um... maybe this should be restarted when there are actually some deaths? It's no fun to read 17 posts (well 18 now thanks to me) without any actual obituaries.

A polearm for Karzoug is not that bizarre. His Strength was 20, and if he had the Augment and Perfect Self class features (The Enhancement school of Transmutation fits more with his personality I think), he could make his Strength 34 for twenty rounds! That is not including Strength boosted spells he could thrown on himself.

Side question:
Is Karzoug an Enhancement Transmuter? Did the Runelords have access to the focused schools of magic?

No, per James, if you're a Thassilonian specialized, you can only get the regular school abilities instead of being able to select a subschool.

Not that it would matter much. The Enhancement subschool gives enhancement bonuses to stats, which wouldn't stack with the +6 STR that Karzoug already has. Or with any strength boosting spells.

Is one of the casters a Sorcerer, Witch, Inquisitor, or Bard? Witch and Inquisitor both get healing spells so they can operate wands and healing scrolls for stuff like Restoration and Remove Disease, and Witch, Sorc, and Bard all get UMD for the spells they don't have on their lists. Witch even gets Reincarnate and eventually Resurrection.

That party composition should be fine, really. But yeah, some more details on which 3 caster classes they're using would help.

Well, Inquisitor isn't an arcane caster :P

If one of them's a Samsaran, they can also pick up a few healing spells from the witch/bard list.

I dropped my subscription for 3 reasons

1. Won't be playing RoW
2. There was a price hike
3. The discount doesn't make up for the shipping costs

If I decide I ever want to do RoW, I can just get the pdf, which is actually cheaper than the 30% subscriber discount.

roguerouge wrote:

Casters need to get the message that they need to prepare for constructs and golems in this AP in particular.these three creatures ARE that warning.

I too agree with the above.

If a player can't learn to cope and adapt then the GM should wipe them and not think twice about bringing them down. Players need to learn that encounters are not going to be a cake walk and if that is what they want then they might want to invest in RPG games like Sailor Moon and Strawberry Shortcake.

Yeah, that seems like a great thing to say to get players interested in Pathfinder. Call me crazy, but when I have completely new players or relatively inexperienced ones, then I will actually lower the difficulty, especially since some of my players didn't even yet know there's a such thing as magic immunity. They did learn it in this part, but I decided not to make anyone feel useless by not having three of the enemies in a row have such an immunity.

And I'm not the kind of person who never offs PCs. In fact, we've had 3 deaths so far in Shattered Star. I just prefer encounter variety, and a more blanced selection of opponents to making a character near useless for a few encounters in a row.

The occassional magic immune monster is fine, of course. I just have a problem against it when players are all low level, have relatively limited resources, and for 3 fights in a row, only have a handful of spells that will work.

Wait you mean that at the moment we can't allow our players to retrain feats?!

Also, am I one of the few not thrilled by rules for young characters?

I'm utterly ambivalent about being able to play children. I guess I just don't understand the appeal at all of sending a kid on a dangerous quest risking decapitation, disembowelment, and mind warping magic*. Thankfully, it probably won't take up a large section of the book, so it's no huge loss, unless children actually end up being statistically better than adults for some classes. I really think that playing an underage character should have far more mechanical disadvantages than bonuses.

*I'm not accusing Paizo of encouraging child abuse or anything, don't worry. It's just personally why I don't want to play a kid - my games tend to be a bit dark.

Why wouldn't they keep the shards they find with them? There's pretty much no reason they should only have a single shard with them if they've found more.

Casters have always been able to fight their way around magic immune enemies, even in core with the Summon Spells. And then the APG added pits, which almost trivialize things like golems since they tend to have crappy saves. So a snowball being able to deal 5d6 damage to a few magic immune enemies really isn't that crazy, especially since your fighters and barbarians are probably doing a lot more. And if you're the kind of wizard who wants to Intensify Empower that to 15d6 at level 10, that's also fine, because the same fighter and barbarian are probably doing triple digit damage at that point without having to expend resources.

Are wizards getting more powerful? Definitely, but I've been finding that the same applies to most classes as well. Wizards are probably getting a better deal out of it, but it's a bit of an unfortunate reality with the system Pathfinder is based on. It could be done, but it would mean really limiting the new options presented for wizards, which I don't really think is a good solution.

At level one you're right. But I don't consider the 'best' of a given level to be the spell you only cast at that level.

Scream allows the baddies a fort save, which is the highest average save in the bestiary. That also means scream will quickly become useless.
It is also not really a blast spell. It's a control spell with a damage rider. We would not be having this discussion if snowball were d6/2 levels.

In contrast, snowball remains the best single-target direct damage spell until, well, forever. You might argue that Disintegrate is better, but it's a weak argument. But even allowing that it is, the fact that this level one spell compares favorably to a level 6 spell is telling (for a dedicated blaster, not just any wizard who throws it in his spellbook).

Well, then it gives lower level wizards a decent single target damage spell. Doing damage to a single target has largely been one of the weaker points of playing a blaster, so I think if anything, I'd like more spells that can do that.

And of course someone's going to make the disintigrate argument if you explicitly say Snowball is the best spell forever :P But I think Scorching Ray also offers a nice alternative at key levels. At 7th level, it's a nice 8d6 (with two chances to hit in case the target is at low hp.) If you pick up empower, that's 12d6, while snowball is at 7.5d6. At 11th level, Scorching Ray is 12d6 while Snowball is still capped at 5d6. If empowered, it's 18d6, while an Intensified AND Empowered Snowball (also a 4th level slot, but requiring another feat) is 15d6 with a pretty low save for stagger.

So yeah, Snowball is a great spell. It's certainly not anything massively game changing though, as a lot of the outcry here seems to suggest. There are certainly spells I would use in place of it for damage/control over quite a few levels, and even in terms of damage output, it's nothing a wizard hasn't been able to deal before, and not nearly as impressive as the damage output of a dedicated ranged or melee attacker. I'm annoyed this spell wasn't evocation, but oh well... I'd just like there to be more single target damage options for casters, if anything. Not as powerful as physical attackers of course, but more options like that would be nice.

I still prefer Ear Piercing Scream to be honest. I mean, at low levels, wizards miss touch attacks quite frequently, and even when you hit, the enemy gets a save to avoid stagger. Ear Piercing Scream, on the other hand, will pretty much always deal at least some damage, gives the enemy a much worse condition (daze) on a failed save, and has a harder to resist energy type (sonic).

Is Snowball better than Shocking Grasp? Well, yeah, I suppose it is better for a wizard. But then again Shocking Grasp never really was a very good spell for wizards, and is used far more frequently with the magus class.

The spell has problems, but I don't think it's the best level 1 blast.

Edit: And as I mentioned earlier, SR: no really isn't that big of a deal at 1st level.

Guided Hand is nice, but it does require you to take Channel Smite, which is completely useless for a ranged attacker. And as a ranged attacker, you're probably already hurting for feats, unless you pick up some bonus ones by multiclassing.

Well, Inquisitors and Paladins make pretty awesome archers, but if you insist on being a cleric, then there are still options.

First you need proficiency with a bow... a few way to do this: multiclass into something proficient, worship a god whose favored weapon is a bow (preferably longbow, but shortbows are okay), or play an elf.

Then you need a good way to add damage to your attacks. Divine Favor and Divine Power work great here, and the latter is especially nice if no one in your group has haste. Sadly, most domains won't give you any bonuses to ranged damage... a couple help melee, but give damage bonuses to your attacks. If you're worshipping Erastil, you might as well take good so you can make you arrows holy. The War domain, if you can take it, gives you a buff for party members, and eventually lets you take a combat feat of your choice, which is nice since there are a lot of useful ones for archer.

I always thought death effects were pretty cut and dry.

If it's a spell that has the [death] tag, then it's a death effect
If it's a SLA or supernatural ability that emulates a [death] spell, then it's a death effect.
If it's a supernatural ability that has the text this is a death effect, then it's a death effect.

If none of those apply then it's not. Even something like a Demilich's Devour Soul.

Edit: And yeah, that does mean Phantasmal Killer isn't a death effect. That's probably because there are a bunch of other ways to counter it.

Meh. While I'm mildly annoyed that it's conjuration, this spell really doesn't bother me for a number of reasons.

It's a low level spell that bypasses SR. By the time I start seeing a good number of spell resistant enemies, I've probably got much better spells at my disposal. It also requires a ranged touch attack, which does not equal instant hit as some people seem to think. With crappy base attack bonus and probably not fantastic dexterity, missing is a very likely outcome at the levels you're most likely to use the spell.

There may be metamagic abuses I'm not aware of, but I usually stray away from those anyway.

You call that militant? That Paizo occassionally includes gay characters? That they actually allow homosexuals to have the good alignment? That they acknowledge the existence of homosexuality?

Okay.

And actually, now that I think about it, most nets won't even work on a demilich, since they aren't effective against targets over 1 size difference away.

So I'm going to stand by demiliches being one of the toughest opponents for their CR. There might be really specific ways to get an advantage (e.x. two party members winning initiative, one being a cleric with silence and the other being a small size user with a net handy), but they can be exceptionally deadly when thrown against the party if their will/fortitude saves aren't quite enough.

You don't get a save for being in a Silence spell...you get a save if someone attempts to cast the silence spell on you. Make the save, and it's centered somewhere off to the side, it still comes up.

And I specificially said Silence on the NET. Gods, trying to land a spell on a demilich? Riiiight.

I'm quite aware you said on the net. As a DM, I would argue that its magic immunity makes it immune to silence: it's immune to any spell that is affected by spell resistance, and Silence does say SR: Yes. It's very possible to argue that it doesn't work that way, of course, since there are limits to how SR works with it, but the demilich's magic immunity does say any spell that allows for spell resistance.

And no, Death Ward doesn't make you immune to Devour Soul.
Edit: It does give you immunity to the Negative Levels if you succeed on the save, but if you fail, you're dead, regardless of having Death Ward or not.

It's hard to believe that level 20+, hyper-intelligent wizards who have lived for hundreds of years would make choices that are sooo sub-optimal as to waste a feat on polearm proficiency. Shouldn't they know better???

One of them is even a blaster for crying out loud.

-Skeld

Well, I don't really think feats are supposed to represent concrete decisions made by characters, knowing there's only a limited amount they can take. That just sort of seems like saying, "why would anyone be a kobold? Their stats are terrible."

You know, I just realized something odd about a section in this part. You know that room with the mind-swapped Nalfeshnee and Deva? It says that players can figure out that they are swapped by the fact that they both radiate chaos, which is uncommon for angels.

Well, first off, can't angels be any good alignment, not just neutral good? That's apparently their most common alignment, but hardly grounds for definitively saying they're mind swapped.

But second, and most importantly, isn't the damning and most obvious evidence that they both detect as evil? I mean, if the Deva was telling the truth, then he would only detect as good.

Doesn't really matter much, but I thought it was a weird stretch of logic to say that the chaotic alignment (which most people won't even bother detecting) was the best proof available (without high sense motive/lie detection), when finding out that they both detect as evil is much more obvious and definitive.