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Recent posts by
Ross Byers:
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Matt Devney wrote:
Umm... Looking at the post now, I think I may have put in a bit too much non-OGL stuff in that, but for some reason the delete and edit buttons aren't working for me.
So I've flagged myself.
Sorry guys.
And I missed editing out some 'rogue' references too. Gah!
I removed your post for you.
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BryonD wrote:
Evil Lincoln wrote:
I'd still like a few words on why the change.
I think we just got it. It was outside the boundaries of being simple enough. PF DMs "needed" more simple.
Disclaimer: I did not work on the core rules in any way, shape, or form other than participating in the playtest. I'm speaking as a player and as a GM.
In this post and more recently in this post I outlined why I felt that the old rules for Regeneration did not work as advertised. (The discussion at that link may be informative, but I'll state the important bits below.)
At first glance, the Regen rules look great: the troll can only be killed with fire/acid, but other attacks can at least faze it and/or tire it out from the energy used to heal. All its wounds will begin healing immediately unless they were made by acid or fire.
The problem is that the mechanical incentives don't match what the flavor incentives are. In theory, the proper way to fight a troll is use fire and acid as often as is practical. But the mechanics don't bear that out:
My other post wrote:
Case study: A troll
1) The party beats the troll unconcious with non-fire, non-acid weapons, then coup-de-graces it with something fire/burns it on a pyre/drown it. Result: The fight behaved exactly like the troll had Fast Healing.
2) The party beats down the troll with a combination of fire and melee. Once again, the unconcious troll is dispatched in some manner. Result: Once again, the fight behaved exactly like the troll had fast healing, unless it somehow gets away long enough to regenerate all of its nonlethal damage.
3) The party uses ONLY fire (somehow). Result: Regeneration is negated. However, forcing a melee character to deal only fire damage usually reduces their damage output.
It gets even weirder that if you consider that if the troll has access to healing magic through class levels, magic items, or allies, mixing damage types is even more suboptimal, since healing magic will heal both lethal and nonlethal damage. At least for me, it strained my suspension of disbelief that what my character should have wanted to do (kill it with fire) clashed so badly with what I the player wanted to do (simply drop the troll unconcious and kill it through on of the many methods available for disposing of a helpless body.)
The problem is that what the mechanics do and what they encourage people to do clashed.
As cool as the image of finding a troll with fire-scars a day after a fight is, what does stop that troll from simply clawing that flesh off, allowing the new claw-wounds to heal properly? Do fire and acid actually leave an imprint on a troll's soul, so that a severed and regrown arm will bear the same fire-induced wounds?
Under the new mechanics, there is actually an incentive to use fire and acid on a troll as often as possible! Player and character agree on what to do! A fireball is still good for something once the troll has nonlethal damage. A fighter has a reason to dig out that +1 flaming longsword instead of the +2 shocking burst one he usually fights with.
It's still not perfect (no rule is), but I think its a heck of a lot closer.
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Zark wrote:
pres man wrote:
Sorry to give you some bad news about this.
PRD wrote:
Splash weapons cannot deal precision-based damage (such as the damage from the rogue's sneak attack class feature).
That's odd. I think I saw a post by Jason (or was it james or someone else?) saying you can sneak atack using touch spells,ranged touch spells and rays. Perhaps acid splash wasn't mentioned, but In think it was.
Is acid splash considered a splash weapon or a spell? Does Anyone know?
Acid splash is a touch attack provided by a spell. A multiclassed rogue/wizard (or Arcane Trickster) would be able to sneak attack with it.
pres man was referring to a rogue throwing flasks of acid or alchemists' fire, which are splash weapons.
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