Witches are limited? First time I've heard that one.
They get every healing spell, a million enchantment and divination spells as well as blasting spells like Lightning Bolt/Cone of Cold/Chain Lightning, a whole load of save-or-dies (Baleful Polymorph, flesh-to-stone) and control spells such as stinking cloud, black tentacles and the like. They've got all the same summons as wizards too, if they want to go that route. Scrying, teleporting, flying, utility out the wazoo. Their base spell list is amazing, and that's before you even include things like patrons.
The only thing they CAN'T do is buff out allies, create illusions or animate dead (They can also do these things if they really want to through patrons and hexes). Specialist wizards face the same limitations, if not more. Giving up two whole schools is huge.
UMD is also a class skill if they're super desperate.
If the Halfhand casts Vanish, would his invisibility be broken by Flaming Sphere's damage? If so, at what point of the turn?
For reference:
Invisibility wrote:
For purposes of this spell, an attack includes any spell targeting a foe or whose area or effect includes a foe. Exactly who is a foe depends on the invisible character's perceptions. Actions directed at unattended objects do not break the spell. Causing harm indirectly is not an attack. Thus, an invisible being can open doors, talk, eat, climb stairs, summon monsters and have them attack, cut the ropes holding a rope bridge while enemies are on the bridge, remotely trigger traps, open a portcullis to release attack dogs, and so forth. If the subject attacks directly, however, it immediately becomes visible along with all its gear.
Apologies, SurplusRaine; it sounds as if my character pitch has some similarities to yours. I didn't read any of the other submissions.
Great minds think alike, or something like that. Or rather... I guess neither of us are quite as original as we thought, hah. It's funny that they ended up in such a similar place, though I guess the Dawnflower-heavy setting kind of begged this sort of character as a balance. I'm actually glad that there's someone else who thinks that it'd make for some great narrative possibilities.
Hello! Recruitments are always so exciting. I, for one, am relishing the chance to play a character on the more benevolent side of the alignment chart.
You already have a general idea of my posting habits as the Halfhand, so we'll jump straight into it:
~
Farah Ashbel, Bladebound Magus.
Description:
A blur of white and red. The soft jingle of a dancer's bells. She spins across the battlefield like a leaf on the wind, every stroke of the scimitar a flawless arc. She is the picture of elegance and grace, wrapped in ivory armor and a crimson veil.
But beneath the veil lies a different picture; one painted in scars and burnt flesh. Scars wrap her body's entirety, pitted and warped by heat and seared to a sheen. They coil up her neck like grasping tendrils, reaching all the way to a clouded white eye rendered useless by flame. Her right cheek is all but burnt away, little more than a few tendons stretched across exposed teeth and gums. Despite this her gaze is intense, the sharp features of a once-beautiful face filled with wild passion and will. They tell a simple story: Her body may be broken, but her spirit is not.
Solku:
Farah spends much of her time in Solku on business. 'Business' being whatever work she can find. Her looks do her no favours in finding a steady occupation - Sometimes she works as a mercenary guard with the Serpentine Blades (when the clients do not find her looks too off-putting), other times she makes her living on the street as a performer, putting on shows of minor arcana and swordsmanship. To this end, her past as a dancer serves her well, and more often than not she relies on the kindness of strangers to get by. A long time ago she performed as a dancer at the Rising Dove, but those times have long since passed.
Though she has left Solku before on many occasions, her Black Blade Uriel insists that she return and stay "Until such a time that She decides you are no longer needed." What the blade means by this, it refuses to clarify.
This Week
Farah has just returned to Solku with a merchant caravan. After giving a mandatory cut to the Blades, she leaves them to enjoy a few days of respite before returning to street performance to earn a living. The majority of her earnings will go towards her monthly visit the Archive of Eminent Tomes (Where she tries to discover the true nature of her Black Blade), and although she knows that she can't really afford it, she may find herself donating both her time and gold towards altruistic causes. She knows that times can be very hard for those unfortunate enough to have fallen on difficult times and helps those she can, sometimes going without so that someone else might have a warm bed or meal, at least for one night.
Crunch:
Farah is a Bladebound Magus, with the Dervish Dance feat. I don't expect there'll be anything too outrageous in the build - Focus on Dex and Int, get Extra Arcane pool and a bunch of spell feats. Maybe Improved Init, Weapon Focus (Scimitar), etc.
Her main focus is that of a secondary combatant, engaging in melee alongside frontliners and dealing as much as she can with elemental damage. The general idea will be the same as most other magus' - smack baddies with spellstrike and fish for crits.
Additional Information:
Fire is at the heart of Farah's character - She's made to interact with devotees of Saranrae and others who use fire in their skillsets, and would work best (From a roleplay perspective) in a party that contains one or more of these characters.
Her Black Blade was meant to be a tie-in to Sarenrae - A sword with a spirit of a holy crusader (Not literally of course). A fun little juxtaposition with Farah herself, who feels as if she was forsaken by the Dawnflower. But this is merely a suggestion - The blade's ultimate purpose is whatever fits the campaign best, as decided by the GM.
Happy New Year, etc. It's certainly been an eventful fortnight. Though isn't it always?
Anyways, just need to sort out the last bit of loot before we can all shop up.
I've left the Pearl of Power and various scrolls in Sabinus' inventory for now (Except for Command Undead, which he can't use. That went to the Viscount). Same deal with the Ring of Feather Fall.
I second giving Enko the new Wand of CLW, as it's always good to have multiple people who can patch each other up. A Wand of Lesser Restoration also seems like a good idea and a solid investment. 4500gp now could save a lot of trouble down the road. In fact, in my most recent tabletop session, the party had to turn back from the final encounter of a dungeon because they had so many debuffs on them from an encounter with a Sea Hag.
Ava will hang onto the Wand of Rusting Grasp for now. Though she can only use it on a 13+, it could still be useful outside of combat.
As for the Defending Longsword, Keen Longsword and +1 Cold Iron Battleaxe, Lucon should grab one of them (The Defending Longsword would probably fit him best) and we can sell the other two for a large margin. Or we could sell all of them to get an extra 3.5k each. Might be nice.
I don't think we're going to be fighting golems soon (Don't quote me on that), or at least not in any significant numbers, so we can probably sell the Golembane Scarab too. If they do turn out to be a persistent enemy type, we can always pick up another scarab or adamantite weapon later.
Anyway, as soon as we've got those sorted out we can measure out the shares of gold, get our shopping (and subsequent stat changes) done and then move forward to adventure!
@Sabinus: Almost forgot! Are you going to be using that Circlet of Persuasion you got during the performances? Because Ava could probably put it to good use now that she has Coax Information.
Alrighty, it's that time again - Post-dungeon loot.
From this little jaunt we managed to pull in 5700gp, 3230gp in valuable tomes and texts, 1600gp in precious stones and a 120gp gold ring.
(10650gp all up, 1775gp six-way split)
There's a bunch of loot that needs to be claimed or sold too:
From the Haversack (We kind of forgot about everything when the Runecurse came up)
- Scrolls: Chill Touch, Command Undead, Ray of Exhaustion, Vampiric Touch and False Life.
- Pearl of Power II
- Masterwork Full Plate
- Heavy Repeating Crossbow
- Mithril Scimitar
- Spyglass
- Mummy Dust
- Unholy Symbol of Asmodeus
- +1 Keen Longsword
- +1 Defending Longsword
- +1 Cold Iron Battleaxe
- Minor Crown of Blasting
- Ring of Feather Fall
- Wand of CLW (35 charges)
- Golembane Scarab
- Wand of Rusting Grasp (9 charges)
Ava doesn't really need any of it. A +1 weapon might be good, but they're also worth a pretty penny when sold.
Was wondering if there were any programs out there that could be used to build an isometric town or city map?
Playsets seemed incorporate this, but with two weeks left and not even a third of its way to goal, I'm not sure how long it'll take to even get to beta. Also, if you haven't seen it before, check it out. It's pretty spiff.
So! Does anybody know of anything that can be used to whip up these sorts of maps without having to draw them yourself?
Alternatively, if anybody knows of a collection of stock isometric building images and that could be used in lieu of an actual program, that would be great as well.
However, there's actually rules for hopping up onto tables that got lost when they fused Jump into Acrobatics.
3.5 Jump Rules wrote:
You can jump up onto an object as tall as your waist, such as a table or small boulder, with a DC 10 Jump check. Doing so counts as 10 feet of movement, so if your speed is 30 feet, you could move 20 feet, then hop up onto a counter. You do not need to get a running start to hop up, so the DC is not doubled if you do not get a running start.
But considering we're not using 3.5, that's up to DM discretion. AFAIK there's no penalties for moving through allied squares, as long as you don't end in them.
Bit late, but here's how concealment and spells intereact by my understanding:
Normal concealment does nothing against targeted spells. Miss chance only applies to things that require attack rolls. Total concealment (Meaning you cannot see your target at all) means you cannot target them with targeted spells.
Things like the slumber hex, hold person, etc. will never suffer from a % miss chance. It's only if you're making an attack roll (ie. Scorching Ray) that concealment will affect a spell.
@Viscount - Unfortunately, you won't be able to deal any damage with your acid darts, because you can't wear down Energy Resistance (It ignores 10 points of damage each time it's dealt acid damage, just like Damage Reduction).
You're thinking of the Protection from Energy spell, which gives it a flat number of points it can ignore before expiring.
I've got this one, the Reign of Winter game with Twigs and my homebrew PbP which is basically just the continuation of a home game that we shifted to the internet - Speaking of which, I need to get my players back onto it, since we'd forgotten about it for about a month.
Also my home game, which for which I am the DM. I'm always the DM for home games, because nobody else can run a continuous campaign for some reason.
Twigs wrote:
We've never used minis in my homegame...
Hey, we totally have minis! They're just made of paper, is all...
I'm happy keeping it as a passive ability, but by the same token if an NPC isn't paying attention or is distracted... then perhaps the automatic 'ping' from a new scent entering their scent-o-sphere is lost in signal noise? That's more what I was looking for here.
Scent's a yes/no ability, though, which makes scenarios that have any ambiguity about them problematic.
S'why I suggested what I did - taking 10 on your perception lets you notice any smells automatically in normal conditions, and when distraction or overpowering scents appear you can roll for it instead of it just being flat out impossible. I'm not trying to give it a chance of failure, I'm trying to give it a chance to succeed. A dice roll helps remove that ambiguity.
Edit: Ambiguity is a bad word for it, but I can't think of a better one at the moment. But you know what I mean. When there's a scent available, but it might be masked by other sources.
The problem with Scent is that it's not built to be a player ability, but it can be fixed relatively simply.
Why don't you just attach a perception check to it? It's a sense, just like vision or hearing. It can run off the same rules.
Proposed Rules:
Set a low base DC (like 10, the survival DC for scent), then add modifiers based on ambient/relative scents and distance as well as how strongly the GM rules the creature's scent to be. This way it's still reliable, but not an auto-detect. A side benefit is that it also scales with level now, rather than being a flat bonus.
In this form, it gives the PC an edge over non-scent PCs (Being able to pick up things vision or hearing would miss, as well as the low tracking DCs) but it isn't overpowering.
That's how I'd run it at least.
But yeah, this isn't something that should be so dividing that it causes a player to withdraw from the game. That just seems excessive.'
Edit: Let's not have this turn into a hostile back-and-forth.
you cant be "prepaired" for an attack from something you cant see/have no idea it is there...
But that's exactly what it lets you do. React to things that no normal person could react to.
Definition for Uncanny:
"having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; extraordinary"
Uncanny Dodge is something bordering on spidey-sense. It doesn't need to have a 'logical' explanation, because it defies what normal people can do. It lets the rogue react split-second to minute stimulae that a normal person would never even know about (the sound of rushing air as an unseen weapon swings through the air, the twang of a crossbow 300ft away). It's uncanny for a reason.
Ava will purchase a set of Masterwork Chelaxian Parade Armour(Identical to Mwk Studded; +2 diplomacy/intimidate vs people from that country; Adventurer's Armoury/Ultimate Equipment) for 175gp.
She will purchase a Noble's Outfit for 75gp, and a signet ring for 5gp.
She will sell her Mwk Studded Leather Armour for 85.5gp.
She will convert 200gp of her wealth into tight-fitting silver and opal jewellery such as rings, chokers and bracelets. She'll leave her ear studs as they are.
Total spending: -255gp; +85.5gp; 200 converted.
Net: -169.5gp
As a fellow Australian, I have no idea what you're talking about. But then again, I'm a city-softened Sydneysider (I hate that word) whose perpetual smog cloud blocks out the sun. There were some really cold days towards the end of summer too. It was weird.
But yeah, people will ignore it because we don't feel it in the suburbs.
That's a gnome, from the 3.5 edition Complete Mage sourcebook. She's the example NPC for the Master Specialist NPC class.
Complete Mage, p73 wrote:
Caphodel Berrendar. Enchanter/8, Master Specialist/5
"Caphodel Berrandar is a captivating personality
and a well-studied arcanist. She funds her studies by hiring
herself out to adventurers and powerful patrons that might
require her abilities. Although she is not evil, she doesn't
particularly care about the politics of those she works for
(though she avoids working for blatantly wicked forces)."
It doesn't list her familiar, though, so what the snake is remains up to interpretation. I don't think it's a familiar, though.
...Damnit, I feel bad for being able to instantly recognize that picture.
How much gold did Sabinus have when he came in? I just listed it as around 200, since that seemed to make up the difference between his gear's value and the level 3 starting wealth, but I didn't have an exact value.
We haven't finished splitting the loot, I don't think. We'll be keeping the ring, the morningstar and the breastplate and selling everything else, yeah? (aside from the pots and scrolls) Was Lucon keeping that Morningstar, by the way? Who was taking the breastplate?
Did we get those precious stones from the boots appraised?
Also, could we get 750gp from selling the shortsword, or was that its retail price? (With us selling it for half)?
Once I've got the answers to these, we'll be able to figure out how much each of us get in gold.
You're correct about copying from another wizard, Viscount. You'd just have to find one who'd let you copy from his book.
As for the material component part, there's no actual ruling on it. The price would be set by the creator. You could get one using the mwk tool type, I guess. It's up the the DM to decide what sort the merchant in question is selling. I used the 300gp one because it covers all eventualities.
However, you also add in the cost of any material components. Mwk Transformation as a scroll would therefore cost 450gp (150 base price, plus 300gp material components).
It costs 10gp in inks to learn a 1st level spell, and 40gp to learn a 2nd level spell.
So for the Viscount to purchase and learn Mwk Transformation would probably cost around 490gp.
I find that a moderate strength score fixes a lot of the percieved problems with the monk. I mean stunning fist and flurry are AMAZING.
Ava can tell you all about my glass cannon monk, however. And exactly how many combats he lasted.
Oho, yes. Twig's eponymous monk. Though to be fair, there's not much that can stand up to a redcap's x4 critical hit power attack. Even if it is the first encounter.
He did well enough before and after that, though.
Back to treasure:
Updated breastplate and jeweled shortsword with their new values. Subtracted the cost of copying the spell (10gp) from the Viscount's gold.
Ava already has a Ring of Protection, so it'd be best on Enko. Also: I completely forgot I bought a composite shortbow after the goblin raid. Could've been using that all this time. I am a clever cookie.
If Caladius is going to get a Mwk Transformation done on his stuff, Ava will tag along too. Her silver warhammer could use the boost. We can shop after dividing the loot. I don't think there's anything else she wants on that list, save a potion maybe.
