Mr. Biggs's page

Thomas LeBlanc wrote:

I asked Wes during his AMA last night if Absalom Station was created before, during, or after the Gap. ** spoiler omitted **

That is an interesting response, as I can see some obvious problems with Absalom Station being created before or after the Gap.

Before: That would imply that somebody is capable of creating Absalom Station in the "now" of the Pathfinder universe.

It's thousands of years in the future. The only thing the AI god is known to have given mortals as a gift is hyperspace travel. Everything else (space ships, space stations, high tech weapons, etc.) has to be presumed to be native tech developed naturally. I have no problem seeing Absalom Station as a huge mortal built project that happened to sit directly above the original Absalom, connected by a space elevator. After Golarion disappeared the gods cut the tether and let it float loose, maybe with a few former Golarion inhabitants teleported aboard.

Crystal Frasier wrote:

Me: I really like ratfolk. That doesn't make me a furry, does it?

Mark: I don't know. Do you dress up like them?
Me: No. That seems like it would be itchy...
Adam: And hot!
Mark and I: EW!
Adam: TEMPERATURE-WISE!

What's wrong with furries?

Nothing at all!

Possession isn't mind affecting, and the caster survives if he's killed in his stolen body. Mind Swap doesn't have either of those benefits.

Deifiic Obedience boons tend to be much weaker than the others, so I see potential balance issues. This already the most powerful PrC.

^Yes, but somebody who is actually from the corresponding cuture might have a better chance of making something that will sell, provided that they can make the bridge to the main existing audience.

Nothing about the history of English language published stories set in other cultures or lands suggest this is true.

A developer clarified that at this time the FAQ applies only to what it covers (explicitly mentioning levels no less) so currently they are unnamed bonuses, which stack. We can spend days arguing whether they should or not, but as is thems the rules.

Developer comments have no rules weight, thems actually the rules, unless in a FAQ or published by the PDT account. We can only interpret the FAQ in light of its own language and the other rules.

Does a Fighter Weapon Training bonus come from the Weapon Training ability or the (level based) formula? Because if the latter, any other ability that gave damage bonuses at levels 5, 9, 13, or 17 would be duplicative under the "level is the source" ruling. That would seem weird! And yet directly analogous to the straight "add half your level" calculation.

I happen to think Chess Pwn is right from a common sense standpoint, Ssalarn is right from a "what deeply flawed 'logic' would the PDT apply if forced to answer this question" view. The correct answer is to apply it the former way now and curse them later.

This is my favorite rules question ever.

Also, these are both vigilante talents, that are clearly designed to be possible to be taken together. If they don't stack, it's a deliberate trap option. Absent any other ruling, I rule on the side that allows an ability to work.

Why is it clear that they are designed to be compatible? This is Pathfinder, deliberate trap options happen all the time.

Camera crews can visit the Outer Planes, do a documentary, and broadcast a view of Heaven and Hell to all the Arcologies in the solar system.

People would still worship the gods.

For those of you who have had an opportunity to analyze the new spells in this book ..... do any of you have any insights as to which ones are the most intriguing in regards to added utility, combat performance, etc.?

These were the ones I liked or thought might be broadly useful.

Brightest Light: An upgraded Daylight (level 4 and hr/level duration) that is a hard counter to Deeper Darkness (automatically dispels 3rd and below darkness spells that enter its area of effect).

Calistria's Guardian Wasps: Sets a day/level wasp swarm trap. Level 3 and no expensive material component, so you can build up several interlocking applications so that enemies can trigger several at once. (It's a 10x10 area, but triggered if you come within 20' without saying the password.)

Commune with Texts: Definitely gives you a max roll when you do research checks to deplete knowledge points in a library. Also gives you a the ability to get books to tell you about their past users similarly to Stone Tell. There's also some less clear fluff about instantly finding what you want in a library, but that sort of conflicts with the research checks stuff.

Dream Reality: For minute/round the target acts normally, but when the spell expires they forget all details of what happened during that time, like it was a dream. Not subject to the same easy recovery or permanent spell aura of Modify Memory. Great when you have to leave a witness alive but don't want him to come after you or testify. But it's pretty high level, 5/6.

Inveigle Person/Monster: Like charm person, but it makes it friendly to everyone. Seems intended to stop combat, since the whole party is now a friend, not just the caster. Can also be used to create a party friend/helper so that a low Cha caster can hand off wrangling duties to the face.

Nex's Secret Workshop: A mass Nondetection effect. Hide all objects and people within close range.

Recorporeal Incarnation: Wear someone's corpse as a long term disguise, not subject to most magical means of discovery and gives you a lot of abilities of the corpse (immunities, weaknesses, weapon proficiencies, spell resistance) so that you won't get found out too easily. I think this is a reprint of what the party uses to imitate drow in a certain AP.

Rotting Alliance: Level 8 so you won't really see it much, but curses a group so that if they are ever within 100' feat of another member of the group in a given day they have to save against 1d6 Con and Cha damage. You can't heal the damage if you stay together, you can't remove the curse unless you're near another afflicted. The ultimate magical restraining order.

Sealed Sending: Like Sending, but you send a scroll with a longer message to any location you have seen, so you can arrange for someone you don't personally know to pick up the message from a dead drop.

True Skill: True Sight for skills! Sort of. Lasts min/level, you pick a skill when you cast it and the next time you make a check with that skill you receive an insight bonus of half caster level.

Violent Accident: Level 2, curses the target from long range (no save) so that sometime over the next day an event will happen (falling roof tiles, runaway wagon, slip and fall, whatever) that inflicts 1d8 per level (max 5d8, reflex half) damage to the target. An interesting way to torment PCs or have NPCs assassinate low level victims that you have to investigate.

If you have the Rivals Guide you might want to incorporate the Queen's Hands band of Thrune agents as possible rivals, allies, or background in this adventure. Although I think they were level 13 or 14.

Although this is about playing in the Campaign Setting, I think this belongs in Advice where you'll get more traffic and input. Flagged for movement.

Yeah, this is a strategic long range spell, not a combat face to face spell.

Carbosilicate amorphs.

Gesundheit!

They were trying to nerf the Ring of Invisibility so it wasn't permanent (until you attack) and blew up the Hat of Disguise and other low CL spell duplication items with round or minute durations as collateral damage.

Hat of Disguise is so cheap, you may as well nab ban that and use the Slayer for the rest.

After a FAQ the hat only works three (CL) minutes at a time, so it's pretty limited in use. Inner Sea Intrigue has a useful option based on veil but it costs like 25k.

Mistake Not... From The Hydrogen Sonata.

Misogynists sometimes promote women. They just treat us as if we're exceptional, and Not Like Other Women, when they do.

That's a pretty weird complaint if the reality is that there is are relevant differences in the sexes. The "misogynists" could be right about that exceptionality and demonstrably acting fairly! Obviously a woman who could qualify as an NFL linebacker would be exceptional and Not Like Other Women if she could pull it off.

Or in Pathfinder terms let's say the Lashunta government wants their top diplomats to be intelligent, wise, and charismatic, with at least a 14 score in each attribute. (Source of upcoming percentages. I know there's some rounding error in these.)

Both sexes would need to roll a 12 (+2) in Intelligence, so 25.9% of each sex would qualify.

Males would need a 16 (-2) to qualify in Wisdom, so 1.9% would qualify. Females would need to roll a 14, so 9.3% would qualify.

Males would need a 14 to qualify in Charisma, so 9.3% would qualify. Females would need a 12 (+2) to qualify, so 25.9% would qualify.

If these value are independent then .259 x .093 x .259 females, or only 0.6239% would qualify. For males .259 x .019 x .093, or 0.0458% would qualify. Using unrounded numbers, 13.6 times as many females as males, proportionally, would qualify.

Assuming both sexes are equally interested in serving in the Lashunta foreign service, a senior Lashunta diplomat wouldn't be misandrist at all if she noted that a male colleague was exceptional and Not Like Other Male Lashunta. Rude, perhaps, especially if the male colleague was in denial about males being less wise and females being more charismatic and that society put more value on feelings than acknowledging reality, but not misandrist.

These proportions are flipped if you want straight 14s in physical stats. And they get much worse if you raise the numbers, because modest differences in averages lead to really big discrepancies on the outer edges of the bell curve.

Pretty sure James Jacobs said she didn't get involved, she doesn't get involved in anything but her job of sorting souls. Is there contrary information somewhere else?

What I'm interested in is if/how the other planes have advanced.

DEMONS+LAZERS=DOOM!

They do really need a reason why outsiders don't use high tech.

While most of the energy weapons in the Tech Guide are useless in outsider battles (resistances, high cost, feat investment vs. teleport, better melee damage, and SLAs), the really big guns like Extinction Devices (kill everything in a vast area not immune to mind affecting that fails a DC 35 Will save) or garden variety nukes (less effective against devils, but the blast wave will hurt anything if it's close enough) means that they should be their arsenals, especially for organized planes like Heaven and Hell.

Do they lack the raw materials for some reason? Ancient concordances against using them? (And the chaotic planes inclined to ignore them can't get organized enough to run a sophisticated economy?) Deific fiat?

This issue really has nothing to do with Starfinder, though. Androffa had this technology many thousands of years ago, and presumably other species developed in long before that.

New story feats include twisted love, where an evil person or thing is in love with you, and you're trying to break its heart.

I hope some of my exes earned some useful mechanical bonuses from this.

Maybe the gods won't tell where Golarion went because they don't know, either...

I alluded to this elsewhere, but I want to see Mengkare emerge from a thousands of years hibernation to buy Space-Konstruction Inc. (S-K for short), the premier heavy industry megacorporation, and serve as its CEO and implement his benign corporate growth plans.

There is absolutely no excuse for Starfinder to use anything other than psionics as its default magic system.

Eons of experience with another existing magic system that demonstrably works, is powerful, and is in widespread use throughout all of the outer planes and the solar system as it currently exists? You need to make a case for why the disappearance of Golarion or the development of technology would make existing magic not work or you'd have to make a reason for psionics to suddenly develop and make it more powerful than the existing options so people would have a reason to switch.

Psychic will get more love because that's the dominant Lashunta paradigm, but spell slots are here to stay.

Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:

The Gods are (for the most part) still around. It's the planet itself, and all information on every plane and every edge of the galaxy about all events that occurred during an indeterminate amount of time, that's missing.

Given the number of powers running about the setting, that seems... unlikely and hard to swallow. What are the benefits (to Starfinder as a game) of such a weird decision? It just seems an easy weak spot for nitpickers to constantly hound you about

If Golarion wasn't uniquely special because of Rovagug's prison (and maybe the Vault Builders) I'd agree, but I don't have a hard time tying a multiverse ending threat related to his escape to something mysterious and far reaching that all the gods would agree to (or be overpowered by a big majority) in order to keep things going.

Of course, if hyperspace travel is a gift of an AI deity, does that mean you have to play nice with it and its worshippers to be able to use hyperspace at all?

The nice must flow.

Is there s gold dragon from Hermea as CEO of a megacorporation.

Think about it: Pharasma saw that Rovagug would eventually break free:
Aroden's absence allowed Cayden Cailean, Iomedae, Norgorber to attain godhood. How many more were able to ascend in the time between Pathfinder and Starfinder?

There's a lot that was wrong with this comment, but this bit is the easiest to refute: all three ascended while Aroden was alive and an active god.

But dispellable.

I'd like to see rules for man-bear-pigs.

The bestiary of this is amazing. I love the daemon and Ixion worm.

Seduction deities: Arshea, Calistria, Cayden Cailean, Shelyn.

Disarming Flirtation (Sp): You can attempt a Charisma
check to entice a target that could be sexually attracted to you into letting you speak for up to 1 minute when it would otherwise be unwilling to consider your words. [In combat it acts as a modified feint, DC details omitted.]

Inspire Devotion (Ex): By spending at least 1 hour engaged in acts of physical pleasure with a willing partner, you can attempt a Diplomacy check to improve that partner’s attitude or increase your influence with that partner (or reduce a rival’s influence with that partner) with no maximum on the number of steps by which you can change that partner’s attitude or disposition.

I kind of love the Rotting Alliance spell. What a great way to bust up a conspiracy or cause chaos in an organization through a magically enforced restraining order. Kudos to the author.

Awesome book, I have exactly one complaint: why is the Execution Inquisition not associated with Damerrich, who is literally the Empyreal Lord of executions.

We should also consider the possibility that Dammerich refused to endorse or participate in this inquisition because the Executioner's Strike ability is so weak. Only pretenders to an execution role would foist this junk on their followers, Dammerich actually has standards.

Edit: I like that the masked personas don't require a feat investment to get their benefits, although you can choose them to get extra benefits. The method of buying them (use consistently for a level) also allows you to change them later or pick a new one when your current one gets busted without having to worry about dead feat investments or making establishing a replacement identity too trivial as a way to avoid the dead feat.

As much as I'd love to see Arcanist DDs

I love to see DDs on any class chassis.

Lorewalker wrote:

"You fool! You've only succeeded in increasing my arrow inventory by 1!"

Hah.

1. Continue getting shot until you collect 60 arrows
2. Run to town to sell all for 1 gp
3. Cast Greater Invisibility and repeat
4. ...
5. Profit?

There's a Creatures and Caverns book were a group pretends to be werewolves threatening a field so a rich farmer will shoot silver arrows at them that they pick up and sell.

I decided to compare Andoletta to all the other Demon Lords, Dukes of Hell, Daemonic Harbinger, and Empyreal Lords to see where the developers are being inconsistent outside the raw DPS, HP, and AC numbers which have been previously remarked up on at length.

The big discrepancies:

1. DR and Regeneration. All Demon Lords, regardless of CR (27-30 range), have Regeneration 30(!) and DR 20. Most of the Empyreal Lords have DR 15 (10 on the weakest CR 26) and Regeneration 10. For Dukes of Hell, Furcas has DR 20 and Regeneration ?? (due to an error they didn't publish a number), while Lorthact has DR 20 and Regeneration 5. Zelishkar, the only published Daemonic Harbinger and by far the weakest creature in this class at CR 21, has neither DR nor Regeneration. Frankly this could be rationalized, as it explains how Demon Lords survive against demon-on-demon violence, but it's an obvious discrepancy.

2. Caster Level of SLAs. All of the Demon Lords and Dukes of Hell have CL on their SLAs equal to their CR, so 25+. All of the Empyreal Lords have CL of 20th. Zelishkar for some reason has CL of 24, higher than his CR of 21.

3. SLA quality and quantity. The bad guys have a consistent theme here, where a lot of the same abilities (astral projection, blasphemy, greater dispel magic) show up at will, plus a couple of thematic ones tailored to the individual. The 3/day are more powerful/niche and also tailored, the 1/day are pretty much always Time Stop and two other 8-9th levels that often seem thematic. But the Empyreal Lords get fewer and weaker SLAs to combo with their (see above) weak CLs. What they do often get is some class based spell casting, but except for Cerunnos and his 20th level Druid casting it's usually pretty awful stuff like Paladin (Vildeis) or limited Inquisitor (Andoletta). It doesn't make up for the superior SLAs the evil guys get.

4. Special Abilities. Frankly, you can tell a James Jacobs' drafted high level stat block from how strong, creative, and personally appropriate to the creature's theme the Special Abilities are. (Honorable mention to whoever did Furcas in Hell Unleashed.) You can also tell from how long this part of the stat block is. The Empyreal Lord special abilities are definitely weak and uninspired in comprison, but perhaps the biggest problem is that they take up such a small piece of real estate that its hard to image them being improved.

Anyway, after this review I find the Andoletta part of this book to be both more and less of a disappointment. It's a bit worse than I initially thought, but it's also very much in line with the Bestiary 4 Empyreal Lord mediocrities. Perhaps the worst part is that no one learned anything from the threads discussing that book.

Still, kudos for trying to publish another Empyreal Lord, and at least I can say it belonged in a book about Heaven, unlike the Chapel of the Argent Shield and Raina Rennold sections.

:-(

I hope there's more artwork of good Hellknights... which sounds weird...

How do you envision showing goodness through artwork? I like the idea, I'm just not sure how it works.

You appear to be suffering from several limitations that are leading you to this point of view. The one I can do something about is to provide the Ultimate Intrigue rules.

Disbelief and Interaction: All three of the subschools above tend to have saving throw lines that say “Will disbelief,” but they differ in how those saving throws apply.

Phantasms directly assail a creature’s mind, so the creature automatically and immediately receives a saving throw to disbelieve a phantasm. Figments and glamers, however, have the more difficult-to-adjudicate rule that creatures receive a saving throw to disbelieve only if they “interact” with the illusion.

But what does it mean to interact with an illusion? It can’t just mean looking at the illusion, as otherwise there would be no need to make the distinction, but drawing the line can be a bit tricky. Fortunately, the rules can help to define that difference. A creature that spends a move action to carefully study an illusion receives a Will saving throw to disbelieve that illusion, so that is a good benchmark from which to work.

Using that as a basis, interacting generally means spending a move action, standard action, or greater on a character’s part. For example, if there were a major image of an ogre, a character who tried to attack the ogre would receive a saving throw to disbelieve, as would a character who spent 1 minute attempting a Diplomacy check on the ogre. A character who just traded witty banter with the ogre as a free action would not, nor would a character who simply cast spells on herself or her allies and never directly confronted the illusory ogre. For a glamer, interacting generally works the same as for a figment, except that the interaction must be limited to something the glamer affects. For instance, grabbing a creature’s ear would be an interaction for a human using disguise self to appear as an elf, but not for someone using a glamer to change his hair color. Similarly, visually studying someone would not grant a save against a glamer that purely changed her voice.

Detect Magic to pinpoint a spell location requires three consecutive standard actions. But if you want to toss in a requirement for an additional move action per aura in your game, it really shouldn't be a problem, this isn't happening in combat anyway.

Can you ask why the Psychic didn't get Protection (Magic Circle Against) from Evil on its spell list, or the new Thaumaturgic Circle on its spell list? It's a pretty weird oversight given that they have Planar Binding as an option, so I wonder if it was deliberate, an oversight, or an unfortunate loss due to space concerns?

Hell's Vengeance includes a good outsider spider in one of the bestiaries. Where do you think one of these things would put each of its eight legs if it grappled a succubus?

Archives of Nethys hasn't added Blood of Shadows content yet.

Does the Armor Masters' Handbook have any grappling related stuff that could help? Armored bodystockings, at least?

The real question is what is the dopest place in Golarion. That answer seems to be Thuvia for quality, Katapesh for quantity.

One option you missed is the Psychic with Shadow discipline. They get Shadow Enchantment as a Psychic spell, Shadow Evocation as a discipline spell, and 1/day per level access to the Darkness domain (so those shadow spells). Similar advantages/disadvantages as the Sorcerer, though.

Gelarshie wrote:

Any options for clerics or wizards looking to improve their summoning?

There's a new Conjuration (summoning) spell. Unleash the Hounds, 5th level, standard action cast, get a swarm of wolves. It's exactly as awesome as it sounds.

Is there a Divination spell called Who Let the Dogs Out?

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

So she's Nebula with hair. :)

What's the necromantic equivalent of bioware/cyberware implants?

Necrografts from Black Markets.