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It has immunity to dimensional anchor but no innate abilities to shift dimensions. At first glance I thought that the immunity was overpowered but now it just seems like a useless ability unless some wizard tries to teleport it. I look forward to when the voting is over so you can explain what you were thinking with that. Actually, dimensional anchor prevents teleportation effects, and thunderdash is a teleportation effect.
Do as I say, not as I do? I know you've got an article talking about why absolutes are problematic when designing things, but that doesn't seem to have stopped Paizo from adding a large number of absolutes (whether they are elemental immunities or other types of absolutes). I'm not sure if it is fair to ding the contestant for following Paizo's lead in this area. Every monster that crosses my desk is a monster that I scrutinize for absolute immunity to an energy type. And unless the monster has a really good reason for having immunity, I change it to a numerical resistance.
Thanks for clarifying, Sean! This will help a lot at this week's game. I had assumed the condition applied to everyone until they acted in initiative order, but even on p. 58 I couldn't find exactly where that particular aspect was touched upon. The "Losing Your DEX Mod" section only says you become flat-footed when surprised or paralyzed. Again, I understand now, but I am just wondering if maybe this was an oversight in writing or if perhaps if it has been reworded in newer printings (or the more likely answer, it's covered somewhere and I am just not seeing it!... There's been only one print run of the Beginner Box so far. I'll make a note of this and see if we can squeeze in some clarifying text for the next printing (I don't know when that'll happen, though). Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but pregen Kyra has only one domain power listed on her sheet. Yes, the pregens really simplify things so you don't have to read a lot of extraneous text on your very first run through the game. As her second domain power would just give her +1 damage when channeling energy to harm undead, we omitted it so we wouldn't have to explain on the pregen why it's heal 1d6 or harm 1d6+1.
I think you're asking two questions.
Q:. Rogues add sneak attack damage to opponents that are flat-footed. Is that only for rogues, or do other classes and monsters add sneak attack damage, too?
And just to be clear, I'm going to answer a question you didn't ask:
*phew* Done with my reviews of the 16. I didn't do a hardcore analysis of everyone's math (I included a blurb at the start of each of my comments explaining why), just spot-checked a few things, and focused on developer and gameplay issues for each creature. Overall, this was a good round with a lot of interesting submissions. Even the things that I felt were only "B" or even "C" quality could easily be salvaged with some development tweaks or changing the CR. This is going to be a hard round for voters, there are a lot of good choices. Good job, Top 16!
IIRC that was the reason for the omission: Abadar is the only non-good deity who has orders of paladins, so that's the only non-good god who gets a paladin code writeup. And it doesn't hurt that Irori's followers are all individuals with individual goals for enlightenment, so his paladins are likely to have their own individual codes based on their own ideal path toward enlightenment. One paladin's code may include "slay no animal unless it attacks you first, for animals are the reincarnated souls of other beings trying to overcome negative karma" another's may be "overcome previous inferior incarnations by challenging yourself to defeat every kind of dangerous animal known to exist."
This may just be me but in the BB I could have sworn characters were flat-footed until their place came up for the first time in initiative, just like in the CRB, but now I can't find it anywhere. How does flat-footed work in the BB? It's simplified. See Surprise in Hero's Handbook page 54 and Losing Your Dex Mod on page 58. It's also relevant to the rogue for sneak attack (page 24).
Now that you've finished your monsters (RIGHT???), you should start brushing up on your mapmaking and encounter skills. Here is last year's R4 rules and FAQ. Here is an old Paizo blog with examples of awful, bad, mediocre, and reasonably good maps, plus two links to common map symbols used in the gaming industry. It doesn't hurt to get a head start... or, if you've never done a map before, get caught up!
I saw the unpainted stone giant blanks in person and they are REALLY impressive. I can only imagine the painted ones are more so. :)
In all fairness the word counter should include the title box. No, and here's why: The rules say
PRESENTATION: Use the presentation for magic items found in the Wondrous Items section of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook (page 496). The subject line of the submission form should contain only the name of the item. The body of the form should include only the complete item text in the appropriate format (this means the item name will be included in the body as well). I bolded the relevant section: the item name goes in the subject line of your submission (so the new thread for your item has the item name as its title), and it is supposed to go in the body of the message. If the word count tool also counted the text in the subject line, it would count the item's name twice (once for the subject, and once for the body), falsely inflating your word count. And I'm not going to suggest that the tech team write code that checks if the text in the subject is also on the first line of the message body, counts the words in the subject if it doesn't match, and doesn't count the words in the subject if it does match, so it gives a correct word count whether or not you include the item name in the body. Why? Because the submission rules are clear, and I'm not going to have the tech team waste their time trying to outthink someone who can't be bothered to follow the rules. About 95% of the people who submit a wondrous item get this right. The remaining 5% need to pay more attention and/or try harder.
Last year I only had one PaizoCon workshop to cover many different aspects of terrain-building. I'm thinking this year we ought to split them up a bit to give each topic more time and give everyone the opportunity to do some hands-on experimentation with building terrain. Here are some topics; I haven't yet thought about organizing these into related topics for a single workshop (that'll come later, once we've rounded out ideas). Would you be interested in these? Are there other topics you'd like to see? * epoxy clay/epoxy putty/polymer clay
Folks, suggesting we go back to how channeling was in the Beta doesn't help the discussion of NEA. We're not going to change how the channeled energy rules work and we're certainly not going to change it back to how it was in the Beta. Let's remained focused on NEA so we can make it understandable, compatible with channel energy as written, and still fit in the 3-4 lines available in the Bestiary 2 appendix. Here's the example scenario, and how NEA is supposed to interact with channel energy.
And here's the latest revision to NEA:
Is that sufficient, or can we make the NEA wording clearer so "everyone" would interpret the example scenario correctly? I think the problem now is the word "targeted," because channel energy doesn't "target" anyone, it's an area that is tuned to either heal the living or harm undead.
Negative Energy Affinity (Ex) The creature is alive but is healed by negative energy and harmed by positive energy, and targeted by these effects as if it were an undead creature. Format: negative energy affinity; Location: Defensive Abilities. Do the other people involved in this discussion think this sufficiently clarifies the rule?
After looking at this one more time: forgive me for being a advocatus diaboli here but new definition can spark another problem with strict RAW reading. Now that you defined it as working only in respect of healing/harming what will be with chill touch: it is described as negative energy effect, it harms living creatures but undead it does not heal - it causes them to flee. How will dhampir/NEA creature react? NEA only affects positive energy and negative energy effects that heal or harm living/undead creatures in the manner of cure and inflict spells, heal/harm, and channel positive energy/channel negative energy. So it wouldn't affect chill touch, even though that uses negative energy (it's not a healing/harming spell).
EDIT: Then again, when the developer drops in to let us know he isn't reading the suggestions made ("TLDR"), I guess it's a moot discussion. Actually, that TLDR was me letting people here know that they could skip all the discussion in the other thread because the net result of that discussion is "yes, this needs to change, and will be changed." I wasn't dismissing what was discussed here.
Also, instead of errating/rewriting NEA maybe start with defining positive/negative energy to be more clear AND after that rewrite NEA. Otherwise it will remain mess. We can't use Bestiary 2 as the place to introduce rules revisions for the Core Rulebook. And there's no space in the Magic chapter of the Core Rulebook to talk about positive and negative energy (which aren't mentioned in that chapter at all). What I really need is a time machine so I can go back and clarify/simplify a lot of the excessively wordy language in the Core Rulebook, much of which was inherited from 3.5. I think this general statement is clear enough. Any questions?
Looking at some of these examples, I'm thinking the NEA does need to be revised again and just limited to pos/neg energy effects healing and harming the creature. I was hoping we could stick with the looser interpretation, but unfortunately the legacy of 12 years of 3E products not written with dhampirs/NEA is going to cause too many problems. Also, here's a question I've been asking myself frequently the past hour: why is there a spell and feat named Command Undead? :( Related question: why do command undead and the Command Undead feat not work the same way? The feat works like control undead (and to top it all of, that's an arcane spell that normal clerics can't get). Brain hurts.
Sean, isn't Antagonize still really borked? Any plans to finish the job on that one? I know you said Jason was looking at it, but all that ended up happening was an increase to the DC, which doesnt seem to account for the radically different scaling of skills vs. ability modifiers. It's still cheap insult-comic-dog mind control. I believe we're also changing it like this (new/revised text in bold):
Also, just for future reference, saying things like use common sense doesn't help a thing Sorry, but I'm never going to give up hope that people will actually try to think about what makes sense instead of being deliberately obtuse and demanding a page of explanation for every rule. It's impossible to write a rule so clearly that everyone will understand it. This rule is going to be weird because (1) the question of "what exactly is negative/positive energy" isn't explained in detail anywhere, and (2) positive/negative energy effects are in just about every hardcover we've published. Ideally, we'd go back through EVERY rule that uses pos or neg energy and clarify what it does to living creatures and undead, and state in the NEA ability that the creature is always treated as undead for these abilities. But we don't have that option, so the GM is going to have to--dramatic music--make a call. The GM is not a robot. You have a brilliant human brain, the product of millions of years of evolution. I'm complementing you by saying, "I think you can figure this out."
If you need guidelines for stats for CR monsters, check the Monster Statistics By CR table in the Bestiary (page 291). If you're wondering what constitutes a "Golarion monster," stick to things that (1) fit with the Golarion setting, (2) have a reasonable expectation that it could be found on Golarion, regardless if its home is elsewhere.
Answered, I'll repeat here what I said there. NEA doesn't give you all the undead traits; that would be a pointless ability (we'd just change the monster's type to undead if we wanted it to work that way).Basically, if an effect specifically says, "this works this way on living creatures, and this other way on undead," then treat the NEA creature as if it were undead, otherwise, treat it as living. "Undead are immune to X, Y, Z" is not the same as "this works this way on living creatures, and this other way on undead." So a dhampir is still affected by charm person because that spell doesn't say "it affects humanoids like X, but affects undead like Y." Unfortunately, we don't have the option of rewording every single effect in all books in the game to clarify corner cases of how they interact with NEA. GMs will have to use common sense on how to parse the two core elements of NEA, which are, in order: * The creature is alive (and therefore, unless otherwise specified, is affected as if it were a living creature), but
NEA doesn't give you all the undead traits; that would be a pointless ability (we'd just change the monster's type to undead if we wanted it to work that way). Basically, if an effect specifically says, "this works this way on living creatures, and this other way on undead," then treat the NEA creature as if it were undead, otherwise, treat it as living. "Undead are immune to X, Y, Z" is not the same as "this works this way on living creatures, and this other way on undead." So a dhampir is still affected by charm person because that spell doesn't say "it affects humanoids like X, but affects undead like Y." Unfortunately, we don't have the option of rewording every single effect in all books in the game to clarify corner cases of how they interact with NEA. GMs will have to use common sense on how to parse the two core elements of NEA, which are, in order: * The creature is alive (and therefore, unless otherwise specified, is affected as if it were a living creature), but
No. The intent of the target and the cleric doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the cleric is trying to heal the living or harm the undead--the dhampir is always treated as if it's actually undead. So if you have a cleric, his dahmpir buddy, and a ghoul, and the cleric channels positive energy to heal the living, nothing happens to the dhampir or the ghoul (because the channel ignores undead). If the cleric channels positive energy to harm undead, the cleric takes no damage (he's living, the channel ignores him) and the dhampir and ghoul take damage (because they're both effectively undead). Edit: In other words, hogarth is correct. :)
I like the negative energy affinity change because before it was limited and ambiguous--obviously it was supposed to affect cures/inflicts and channel positive/negative, and presumably other effects that have that sort of flip (like heal/harm), but that's a really specific subset of the rules, and if that's all you wanted it to be limited to, you might as well say "you're living, but harmed by positive energy like an undead and healed by negative energy like an undead." I think it's more interesting if the undeadish-ness of these creatures comes up more often. If this becomes a problem, we may revise the ability so it's limited even further to just effects that use positive or negative energy (which would rule out sunbeam, which is neither), but we'd like to see how this works for now.
Guys, it's a really simple rule: you can talk all you want, just don't talk about your submission during the voting period. Toeing that line risks getting a DQ. You can still talk about Dr. Who. Or Firefly. Or your campaign. Or your birthday. Or the latest cool movie trailer. Or whatever. Just don't talk about your submission. You're not six years old. You can keep your mouth shut about one topic for a week. You don't feel the need to blab about what presents you're buying for a person's birthday, or spoilers for every movie you've seen, or the color of your latest bowel movement, or details about your sex life, right? You understand the concept of discretion, and that certain things shouldn't be talked about under certain circumstances, right? So be discrete and don't talk about your submission during the voting period. Yes, in a way, this is a test to see if you can honor an NDA. But it's also something you do every day: not talking about stuff you know you're not supposed to talk about. Competitors this year were admonished to "shut up" because this year we had far too many people getting post-happy in ways that flaunt Rule #5. If you're having a problem seeing where the line is, just stay away from the line entirely. But that line is just about one thing (your submission), and there's plenty of other stuff to talk about in this community, if you can just not talk about that one thing for a week.
Are we allowed to ask questions of the judges regarding assignments during non-voting hours? Yes. And if it's something we think needs to be clarified (like, "we forgot to say your monster can't be a template"), we'll make a big post about it so all the competitors see it. And if it's something we don't think needs to be clarified (like "Do we include a Tactics section?" when the provided template doesn't have a Tactics entry), we'll transmit AWKWARD SILENCE.
Hey, I did the darklight candle. This is the closest I've ever gotten, so I'd love personal feedback! Here is your item: Neil felt it was an innovative low-magic item that found an underused rules niche. Clark agreed, calling it a "why hasn't this been done before?" item. I would have liked it better if its radius matched the 5 ft. radius of a candle (because the item is a candle) or were a torch (to match it's torch-like 20 ft. radius). I would have liked it even more if it affected all creatures in that area instead of just the bearer, mainly because it lets the party huddle up to share the effect, and the GM can apply the expanded vision range to all party members instead of remembering that one has better vision range than everyone else in the group. The item is utilitarian, but not "sexy." I do like the "breathe on it to light it" bit, though, that's creepy and neat. Ryan thought it was clever, but too expensive and "lasts forever" (probably meaning he'd like it better as a lower-cost, consumable item). In the end, it wasn't quite as good as the other items we decided to keep. Clark almost used one of his golden tickets to move you into the Top 32, and says you "definitely caught our attention." To give this item a boost, I'd go with Ryan's suggestion and make it an inexpensive consumable. Perhaps you could add a one-shot effect to it, too, like if you throw it into an existing fire source (like a campfire) it's immediately burnt up but hides all light from the fire for X rounds.
Here is your item: The judges agreed that the design on this item is pretty tight--everything makes sense and there's no confusion about any of its abilities. The main flaw is it's not much more than Diehard-in-a-can. Diehard:
Item:
Those three similarities fall into the "things should be the same, or different" rule of design, which I believe I've discussed before. The fourth ability is the only thing that's really new. I pointed out to the judges that this item is best when worn by the party cleric. She's going to have the best Wis, which means that Wis check is easy and she gets the biggest bump to her negative hit point maximum, which gives her a lot more wiggle room when it comes to healing herself and the rest of the party ("Oh, I'm at –9, I'll make my Wis check, then channel positive energy for 4d6, which'll bring myself up to positives again and help my allies." Me pointing this out is a criticism because the cleric already has many, many things she can do to prevent herself from going unconscious, so you're basically making her better at something she's already good at (like a barbarian item that makes you even stronger when you rage). It's a solid item, but it's very similar to a feat and doesn't have enough "punch" to make the Top 32. Perhaps if its main ability was something else, and the Diehard-ish stuff was just secondary to that (or if it only gave one of the benefits of Diehard, then it wouldn't be a feat-in-a-can).
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