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Snakebearer wrote:
Otherwise, just animate a high dex non-humanoid monster of the proper CR = Boom. There you go. Plus, make it a bloody skeleton too, and you're ready to own stuff.

Again.

The problem is this.

A CR 1 skeleton has an AC of 16ish.

A CR 10 skeleton has an AC of 16ish.

A CR 20 skeleton has an AC of 16ish.

Every other trait on the minions grows. They have terrible saves, sure, but they grow. The HP on them is pretty strong. Their to-hit and damage values go up.

AC doesn't. This seems like a mechanical oversight.

Snakebearer wrote:
But tbh, the skeleton/zombies from animate dead are really meant to be fodder or glass cannons. If you're after "one strong" minion, I'd be looking at Create Undead instead.

You're allowed to have two minions of double your HD as skeletons or zombies; you're allowed to have a single minion of your own HD or less with Create Undead. It's not going to be particularly strong.

Snakebearer wrote:
Like mentioned earlier, these unintelligent undead are not supposed to be comparable to an animal companion, a cohort or a planar ally/bonded creature. It would simply not make any sense.

Undead minions are an important part of what makes evil clerics competitive with good clerics. They get crap spontaneous casting and crap energy channeling. In many ways, Animate Dead is an important part of the class.

This is also getting tangential.

Why does AC not scale on skeletons and zombies like anything else? It seems weird that an animated turtle would have the same AC as an animated squishy.


Animating a dead fighter gives you a 1 HD skeleton (or 2 HD zombie), neither of which are useful for... pretty much anything, at the point where you get the spell.

They're not even speedbumps, they're collateral damage. They're more of a bother to carry around than the boost they give you to combat.

Instead, I take two minions, each of which are as close to double the CL of the cleric as possible. These minions are pretty strong and certainly helpful.

However, as you get stronger minions, their AC doesn't grow. You run into a dinosaur with AC 20 because they have a +8 natural armor bonus; you animate the skeleton, the dinosaur now has 6 fewer points of AC.

When you run into the AC 30 high CR creature and you animate it, the amount of AC it loses via the animation process increases.


Yeah, the character has Dragon's Breath as a spell.

Taking that one would mean that the character could nuke fairly competitively with the sorcerer for a while... I'll consider it.

Thanks! :)


Skeletons only have armor proficiencies if the base creature had them, though- and most creatures don't.

If you throw armor on your undead minion, they take the armor check penalty as a penalty on attack rolls, which makes them have a decent AC but makes them effectively harmless.

Instead, I just have the party's Sorcerer cast Mage Armor on them, which is a nice stop-gap solution, but even then ACs quickly run past the AC that the undead are getting...

Does anyone make CR 1/3 skeletons? What are they even useful for? :P


Hm, the point is rather- as you level up, you face creatures with more HD, which hit harder, have more HP, better saves, etc.

These make for undead minions with more HD, which hit harder, have more HP, better saves, etc...

... except for AC. Your zombie minion will have AC 14ish at level 5 and when you're level 15, they'll be... what, AC 15, maybe? Their AC, inexplicably, does not go up, which is weird to me.


Cure light is the kind of spell I'm always carrying around in wands, so probably not the best choice.

Cure Critical might be a better choice, but, well, the whole party is built around the assumption that I'm not going to be healing (much), and I'd hate to spoil my party with more than a couple rounds of healing per fight :p


I have an Evil cleric with the Undead, Dragon, and Fate domains (he has the third one for plot reasons, 100% homebrew), and I'm considering taking Preferred Spell for his level 9 feat.

What would be a good choice of spell for him? My first instinct is Enervation (from the Undead domain), as it's an excellent spell to be able to use over and over, but I was wondering if there's a better alternative I'm missing.


Soulkeeper wrote:
Are there any general rules for determining if a corpse is still usable?

None on the books, but as a general rule a creature you just killed should be possible to animate.

Exceptions include stuff like Disintegrate spells, but unless a corpse is absolutely splattered, you should probably let the player animate it.

It's what the spell does, after all.


Keep in mind the templates; they make undead minions a lot more fun and versatile.

Fast Zombies aren't slow, and are in fact hasted. Bloody skeletons regenerate and can re-form when they're destroyed.

When animating, count a templated zombie/skeleton as twice their actual hit dice for purposes of cost and whether they can animate it in one casting (Desecrate usually takes care if this, but you can't have a templated undead minion with more than half your control HD allotment at a time). Once it's animated, you control it normally.

Make sure you Desecrate the ground where there's an altar to your (evil) deity present for the +2 HP/HD, otherwise they're squishy as all hell.

There you go, enjoy the powerful ability that makes Evil clerics competitive with their positive energy, useful healing spell-spontaneous-casting brethren!


So, when you make something into a zombie or skeleton, they gain an AC rating according to size- not base creature, so a zombified turtle is just as squishy as a zombified human, all else being equal.

This seems to work fine at low levels, since undead minions have low AC compared to the fortified members of the party (cleric, fighter) but can be buffed (mage armor) and they feel like they're squishy but not hopelessly so.

As the cleric levels up, the AC and to Hit stats on both him and his opponents go up, but the AC on his minions stays the same.

Does this cause problems for anyone else? It seems to me like high level undead minions just get power attacked and everything hits them with a roll of 2 on the dice, making attempts at increasing their durability kind of pointless...


gnomersy wrote:
There is no place in the world that nobody lay's claim to and most of the time it's claimed by 3 or 4 governments at the same time.

Well... yeah, in a civilized world, this would be the case.

In this instance, this is a huge stretch of land in which the only sapients living on it are cranium rats, who have been duly bribed.

I mean, it might be unrealistic and demihuman empires should be more expansionistic than they are? But, hey, in the game, there's literally no one in the area and no governments we've even heard about. :p

Maybe there -is- a king somewhere that considers the whole shebang his property. We don't know about him!


Eschew materials has a limit on the materials it allows you to eschew, so, no, it does not.

To be honest Eschew Materials does very, very little for you, comparably to Spell Mastery in efficiency (i.e. terrible)


There's no government in the area we're in, though.

It's essentially wild lands. We wouldn't know who to buy nobility titles from.


Trayce wrote:
A flying carpet is one idea, but I'd go a step further: why not build an airship, complete with cabins and crew so you have a mobile home to adventure from?

This is an -awesome- idea and I award you one (1) internetz for it, sir. ^^


doctor_wu wrote:
Why do you need the kobold miners in the first place. THe thing is have you ever heard ofn hydraulic mining you could wash away an entire hillside with the decanter of endless water Although this will likely lead to conflict with druids.

Hmm...

Mostly because while I've learned a lot about modern mining methods, my character hasn't.

And we -are- using hydraulic mining; we're using an actual river for it, though. And cyanide + acid (provided by the kobold priest's acid breath, hilariously) for the processing...

Which isn't to say we aren't having a problem with druids already! The last one came and dive-bombed us with ice storms. I swear we're becoming eco friendly if only because if we don't we keep losing minions. ¬¬


Haha, yeah. We started out clearing gryphons; our next step is to pay tribute to a (brainwashed) dragon to help provide security.

As to the other stuff, they've been mostly dealt with! There are few monsters left in the area, and most of those work for us; we have investors helping pay for the up-front costs (and a Lyre of Building, immensely useful), the land we found the mine on was claimed by no one (there's a human settlement a few days away from it, but it's a backwater city with no powerful NPCs of note)...

Problems keep cropping up, but we're on top of things so far! We recently partnered with a former employer who has a gem mine to sell jewelry rather than gold bars / doubloons.

Still waiting for the other shoe to drop :P


BobJoeJim wrote:
This is tangential, but I'm just curious. What did you determine was the mine's yield, and how did you and your DM come to that number?

So far, the yield's mostly been determined by the number of workers available. The more kobolds we get, the greater the mine's output.

There's diminishing returns and there's probably a cap, but we started getting 6000g a month from it, and are now up to 10000. (This is after substracting the costs of running the mine). It probably goes a lot higher.

As to how the DM came up with the number, I'm fairly sure he just pulled it out of the air.


Yeah, the Paladin becomes immune to all of these.

Is this a problem?


cranewings wrote:

Fair enough. A better way of how I think a shield should be handled is making it more like SR. SR blocks spells unless the wielder wants the spell to hit him.

The shield blocks spells unless the wielder relaxes his mind and stops thinking of the shield as a shield.

There is still a difference between a spell like invisibility and a spell like evil touch. Evil touch requires a touch. A shield shouldn't stop invisibility anymore than it should stop Hold Person.

That's pretty reasonable, I suppose.

I find that touch AC is used little enough in the game that I feel no real need to buff it, especially not for Fighters, who get enough free stuff as it is (whereas Rogues, comparatively, would end up with poor touch AC), but I feel that's rather a problem with shield AC bonuses being terribly balanced than the underlying concept.

It should work well enough at low level.

Thematically, I find it weird that you'd be able to block a curse with a shield, or that a petrifying touch would work if it touches your metal plate but not your metal shield, but, eh, whatever works for you and your group. :)


cranewings wrote:
I don't get the difference between touching a person's shield and touching the thing they are standing on. The level of contact from skin to skin is equal (none).

Skin contact is not needed- otherwise, even regular clothes would make it nigh impossible to land a touch attack.

The game makes a difference between objects that a person is carrying and objects that they aren't.

A good rule of thumb is: if you cast Invisibility on the subject, does the item become invisible?

Sword carried: Yes
Shield worn: Yes
Headband: Yes
Bench he's sitting on: No
Floor he's standing on: No

You get the idea. If it becomes invisible with Invisibility, it's fair game to touch to deliver a Touch spell, and therefore provides no bonus to Touch AC.


CrackedOzy wrote:
Would you let someone with a touch spell wait until you hit them with your sword and say the same? My shield is a carried object, not me. Armor I can buy as being "me" but not a shield, IMHO.

Well... no, unless the guy with the sword made a called shot to target specifically the hand in which a caster is holding the charge of a Touch spell.


If someone trying to touch you to lay a spell effect on you touches your shield, you can still reasonably say they "touched" you, I think.


Gnomezrule wrote:
I respect your groups out of character commitment to game balance, but it begins from a premise that is metagaming. You have the money that really should be the GM's problem.

Yes. Yes, we -are- metagaming. That's kind of the point.

The DM trusts that we won't abuse the resources, which is why we even -get- the resources. We don't break the trust, he gets to keep his balance, and we get to mess around with silly, foolish plans that make no sense nor a non-metagame, optimize-for-your-life game style.

Apparatus of the Crab, I'm looking at you!

Gnomezrule wrote:
A huge bit of any gold that comes out is going to be needed to keep it opperational.

Yeah, but we're also getting a big chunk of profits ATM as well.

Gnomezrule wrote:
Second, becareful I am not sure worshiping Tiamat equals dragons won't be after you. Especially being that even religious Kobolds are slaves and or snack foods.

Oh, no, we're not -buddies- or anything. Just, we have a higher chance than usual of actually engaging chromatic dragons at diplomacy rather than having to apply sword to face, and we have no problem with having to pay a substantial tribute if it comes to that.

Gnomezrule wrote:
Let them bank roll something far away, a war, building a temple or whatever but make it far enough away that it is not able to be turned into tremendous power or wealth in the scope of the campaign.

Ooo, big temple! That could be badass.


Bomanz wrote:
I guess I don't understand why this lucrative gold mine replete with a cowardly work force who would kowtow to the most powerful being around hasn't been attacked by a big dragon looking for a hoard/lair yet.

Well, two things.

One, it's a secret gold mine (so far, anyway. We know it won't last forever)

Two, the party's leader is a kobold cleric of Tiamat, so we're actually on really good terms with chromatic dragons in general.

But, yeah, sooner or later something with higher CR than us will move in and take over, we're well aware.

Our goal is to deplete the mineral resources before that happens, and we're investing a fair amount of money into making sure no one finds out about the place.


That's a good point, Fleshgrinder, but D&D/Pathfinder's economy does not make sense to begin with.

A gold piece is worth a gold piece, and do not delve into the subject any further, because it is a ridiculously huge gaping hole in the game's consistency that is best left alone :P


Krome wrote:
Evil lair? I presume then the group is not good...

Well, no. Evil party- so evil they went corporate. They call themselves Permanent Solutions, Inc.

Krome wrote:
Okay... gat an NPC to start recruiting area orcs and hobgoblins. Equip them to a MUCH higher standard than usual. Send them out to fight the humans and try to take over the world.

That's not their particular brand of evil, though. We -are- doing something similar with kobolds, but... Not so much to conquer the world yet, but maybe at higher level... (we're level 7!)

Krome wrote:
Use the money for flavor and fun. Assure the GM you are playing Dungeons and Dragons (or Pathfinder) and not Merchants and Accountants.

Oh, most of the game revolves around killing things and taking their stuff. It's just that we also have a gold mine now. :P


It's not an Adventure Path, and, yeah ,we've been investing on infrastructure.

We built houses for the miners and walls around the compound and stuff like that. It's quite the little kobold settlement by now. :)


I'm not sure what AP means?


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Yep. That's right. We're using masses of kobold minions to mine it, too.

This means the party has a huge wealth income.

Here's the catch, though.
Because we understand how D&D works and we do not want to kill the goose laying the golden eggs, we do -not- want to spend -any- of the gold mine proceeds in items that increase our characters' combat performance.

Because, if we do so, then we'll quickly find that the flow of funds dries up and dies. We don't want to give the DM an OOC incentive to take it away.

So, with that in mind.

What suggestions would you have for cool and fun, yet no-impact-on-combat items and investments that a fairly rich low-level party could get? :P

We've discussed stuff like building golems or getting magical traps for our evil lair and such, but no really awesome ideas so far... ^^


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Spells are awesome, but it's also fun to get cool stuff to mess around with in addition to the powerful things that'll define what you do in combat.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:
LOL, mark me down in the "OMG! You think clerics aren't powerful enough?" camp...

... no, as noted, I'm well aware of how strong clerics are. We regularly joke about it during sessions, in fact.


Yeah, I'm not looking for great output buffs or anything, I'm well aware the Cleric is already either the most powerful or second most powerful class on the game, depending on level.

I do think there's space for cool yet not that powerful abilities thrown in for fun here and there, though. It feels weird and asymmetrical that they wouldn't get domain powers all throughout.


That would be a shame; the character was really written up to be a cleric through and through.


Hmm. All right. In that case, I guess I'll talk to my DM about filling out the Domain Power stuff with custom content.


I find it curious; is there a particular reason for this? It seems like it would make sense for Domain powers to keep climbing as you level up, but I can't seem to find any Domain power that kicks in after 8th level.

Am I missing something? I figured they would be more like the Sorcerer's Bloodline, which keeps granting stuff all the way to the end.


When a creature is affected by
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/terrible-remorse

and they fail their save, do they have to spend their action dealing damage to themselves (therefore making this a CC spell)? Or do they just take the damage and act normally (therefore making this a DoT spell?)


Thank you very much! :)


http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/dismissal

What, exactly, is an "Extraplanar Creature"?

Obviously, if you're on a Material plane, a summoned creature would qualify.

However, is there a strict definition somewhere? If you use plane shift, can Dismissal be targetted on you, for example?


I'd rule that the character with Blink is essentially immune to Grappling, as incorporeal creatures cannot be grappled; apply the grapple damage normally if the initial grapple check succeeds (and goes through the miss chance), but the grappled condition never actually applies.


AdamMeyers wrote:
Specifically, I'm curious about things like how you make a fast zombie or other variants in place of a normal one, whether size HD count against the total you can control, and other things like that.

Works like this.

Upon casting, you can animate only CLx2 HD of undead (CLx4 if Desecrating, which you should -always- do when animating undead).

Templated undead count as twice as many hit dice as the regular kind at the moment of casting.

So, if you're a 5th level cleric, you could (assuming Desecrate):
- Animate a 20 HD skeleton or zombie (How the hell did you get your hands on that corpse?)
- Animate a 10 HD bloody skeleton / fast zombie / other templated undead

After casting, the templated undead counts only as as many HD as it actually has for purposes of controlling it.

In other words, templated undead are better, and more expensive to animate. However, you can't add templates on corpses that are more than twice your level in HD to animate, whereas you -can- animate corpses far beyond that in HD.


Turin the Mad wrote:

What's the nature of that society though? :)

I suspect it's a velvet glove over an iron gauntlet kind of thing...

Heck yeah! XD

They are -definitely- not nice people. The reasons they do all these "nice" things are inherently selfish. :p

It's just, their evil is more "And then we'll refuse to raise salaries and instead claim that we provide benefits! And we'll cite our dental plan! Mwahahahaha!"

... our Fighter's moniker is "The Dentist". He punches out the teeth from his slain foes and keeps them in a jar. He makes armor spikes out of the larger ones. He actually has Profession: Dentist as a skill. :p


To be fair, Procastinator, DR does tend to ruin the output of two-hander wielders as well. Enemies with any kind of significant DR make it more than worth your while to find a way to bypass DR altogether; defeating such an enemy by just plowing through their resistance is a last-ditch effort, as by that point the damage average of your actions is crippled either way.

It may become more worth your while to try and crowd control the target instead, or bring it down with magic damage.


Nope. Each attack applies DR separately, making single-big-hit attacks superior at overcoming DR-protected enemies than a flurry of smaller attacks.


This is kind of a funny anecdote so I thought I'd share.

We've played a lot of D&D games in our time. Our Good-aligned parties regularly go about their business adventuring, raiding dungeons, killing evil creatures, taking their stuff, and then using said stuff to kill bigger evil creatures.

Our evil party goes about liberating slaves, enacting civic improvement projects, building libraries / city walls / roads, stimulating commerce...

Essentially, they're a corporation. Nasty, but most of their clients are pretty glad they're around.

Funny how that worked out. The Good guys make a living out of killing and stealing while the Evil guys are productive members of society XD


Hmm. Well, if this is indeed the case, yeah, it does seem a lot weaker than Hold Person, if more applicable...


Hold person is sorc/wiz 3, whereas oppressive boredom is sorc/wiz 2, though?


From the wording, I don't get the impression that you could, for example, declare a swift action, make a save, then declare a move action, make a save, etc, though.


I have several questions about this spell:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/o/oppressive-boredom

- If making a new save against the effect is not an action, does it mean that you need to fail twice to lose your first action?
Otherwise, how does it differ from Hold Person's full-round-action-to-save implementation?

- When it says you lose your action, does it mean you don't get to do anything that turn, or does it mean specifically your standard action (and you can still move, etc?)

- Isn't this spell just downright better than Hold Person?


So, does it matter who creates a scroll to see what stat you need to be able to use it to cast?

Does a scroll of Fireball require Int 13 to read if created by a Wizard and Cha 13 if created by a Sorcerer?

Does a scroll of Cure Serious Wounds require Wis 13 to read if created by a Cleric and Cha 13 if created by an Oracle?

... does a scroll of Lesser Restoration require Wis 12 to read if created by a Cleric and Cha 11 to read if made by a Paladin?

This seems really weird.


Thanks for pointing that out, I was not aware of that caveat.

Also, it sounds like an error to me. The whole point of two-weapon fighting should be that you're fighting with two weapons.

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