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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber. Organized Play Member. 356 posts (361 including aliases). No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 4 Organized Play characters.


The Exchange

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So, book 2. The Scarlet Triad gave the Cinderclaws a powerful magic ritual, a clay golem, and a shard of the Orb of Dragonkind*, and possibly other resources as well. In exchange, they get the arsenic-and-maybe-Dahak-tainted gold. What the heck for? There's no reference to the gold in future adventures, and no real indication of a ritual it's being used for, despite references to "draconic resonance" and Hezle testing its "divine purity."

Is the gold just a red herring? Does the Scarlet Triad simply want to help the Cinderclaws free Dahak for their own reasons, and asked for the gold to make their offer more plausible? [edit: I suppose it does say in a sidebar at the very front of Cult of Cinders that they're drawing "motes" of energy out of the gold to reconstruct the Orb. But the Cinderclaw's contact is Laslunn, who is only involved in the slavery side of things? But I suppose the gold can be somewhat explained. It doesn't answer the larger question below, when the nul-acrumi vazghul is specifically intended to help crack open Huntergate and let out the Dahak fragment, and Against the Scarlet Triad specifically has Zandivar trying to release him.]

Which leads to the larger question, why does the Scarlet Triad want to free Dahak's fragment? The books say that the Triad has two plans for getting Mengkare off their back so they can maintain their wealth: the Orb of Dragonkind to control him, and releasing Dahak to distract him. But...really? They're not lunatic cultists, they're rich pragmatists. How is releasing a force that wants to crack open their planet like a walnut compatible with them maintaining lives of comfort and wealth?

Can anyone suggest an alternative motivation for the Triad to help the Cinderclaws that doesn't involving releasing Dahak, but which is compatible with their actions in the other books? It's entirely plausible that they don't even believe the stories of Dahak being trapped in Huntergate, but I get stuck at that point trying to figure out what they are doing there.

* and then we face the issue that giving away the fragment is like Thanos thinking the best way to gather the infinity stones is to give Loki his only infinity stone.

The Exchange

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Thanks to everyone above who did the heavy lifting. I compiled them together for an answer on reddit, and figured I'd paste it back over here to get everything into one comment.

Pathfinder

RotRL: The Runelords will return. [Not a literary reference]
CotCT: Sic semper tyrranis. ["thus always to tyrants" Apocryphally associated with the assassination of Cesar, definitely said by Booth at the assassination of Lincoln.]
SD: Keep watching the skies. [The Thing from Another World (1951)]
LoF: Still just one left. [Not a literary reference. Probably refers to the titular Final Wish]
CoT: Quisque suos patimur manes. [We bear each one our own destiny. Virgil, The Aeneid]
KM: It's good to be the king. [History of the World, Part 1 (1981)]
SS: Asps... very dangerous. You go first. [Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)]
CC: What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! [Castlevania: Symphony of the Night]
JR: Hide a stone among stones and a man among men. [The Hidden Fortress (1958]
S&S: Damnation seize my Soul if I give you Quarters, or take any from you. [Edward Teach aka Blackbeard]
SS: Sorshen lives! [Not a literary reference]
RoW: O Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? [Ode to the West Wind]
WotR: Ayavah was right all along! [Not a literary reference. From pathfinderwiki: A woman of many secrets, Ayavah's most outlandish belief is that she believes the demon lord Nocticula to be a fallen empyreal lord and she is seeking redemption from her demonic nature.]
MM: A crocodile be against him in the water, a snake be against him on land, he who would do anything against this tomb. [From an inscription on the mortuary temple dedicated to Amenhotep]
IG: Keep watching the skies. [The Thing from Another World (1951). Again.]
GS: We are like dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants [Bernard de Chartres, popularized by Isaac Newton]
HR: Omniscient am I not, yet many things i know [Faust, by Goethe]
HV: I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity [The Marriage Of Heaven and Hell, by William Blake]
SA: Have you found the yellow sign? [The Yellow Sign, by Robert W. Chambers]
II: Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed [The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle]
RoA: Where is my mind? Way out in the water, see it swimming. [Lyrics from Where Is My Mind by the Pixies]
WftC: I would rather see her lovely step, And the radiant sparkle of her face, Than all the war chariots in Lydia, And soldiers battling in arms. [Sappho]
Return: New Thassilon is just getting started—long live Queen Sorshen! [Not a literary reference.]
TG: Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back. [Lyrics to Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen]

Starfinder

DS: How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? [Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs]
AtAT: The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. [Sir Winston Churchill]
SoS: To light a candle is to cast a shadow. [A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin]

The Exchange

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Hey, thanks!

The Exchange

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Ice Titan wrote:
where I added the cultist skeleton inside that animates if the cube reaches half hp (a residual effect from the ward in B15)

I _love_ that.

The Exchange

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"You can use an action to Fly 0 feet to hover in place. If you’re airborne at the end of your turn and didn’t use a Fly action this round, you fall."

So, the creature can Fly up, make two attacks and end its turn. The next turn, it would need to either take an action to "Fly 0" and remain in place, or make its attacks and then fly onward.

This is a little inconsistent with the Maneuver in Flight action under Acrobatics, which suggests that in general a hover in place action might be an Expert action, while "reverse direction" is Master. But that's all at GM discretion.

I'd be inclined to take context into account. Somebody flying through magical means probably doesn't need a roll to hover in place, just spend an action to keep themselves aloft. But I've never seen a falcon hovering like a hummingbird, so the Emperor Birds would probably require Acrobatics to hover. Turning around as a Master-level action I can only imagine as flipping a U-turn in place, which again I can't imagine a bird doing, but turning if they've got some room around them shouldn't be too difficult.

The 10-foot hallway for birds with 5-foot wingspans is a bit tight. I'd probably have them swooping past back and forth with a DC 10 to turn around at the ends (rolling a 1 would be a failure, and they'd bang a wing and tumble to the floor). The bat, I'm picturing wide flappy wings as it basically hovers over somebody's face clawing at them. No check, just use a Fly 0 action.

At the end of the day, I'd remember that unlike 3.x, PF2 doesn't proceed from the assumption that PCs and monsters play by the exact same rules. If you can describe it in a way that sounds legit to you and your players, go ahead and do it.

The Exchange

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BigNorseWolf wrote:

I'm derping finding any rules for turning while flying.

Its not under the fly skill, its not under movement, its not under the fly spell...its not under the universal creature rules...

It's under the Fly skill:

Flying Maneuver DCs
15 Turn greater than 45° by spending 5 feet of movement
20 Turn 180° by spending 10 feet of movement
20 Fly up at a greater than 45° angle

Majuba wrote:
A flying mount has to expend movement to turn, and I don't think can turn at all and still do a ride-by, but I'd have to check

A flying mount can turn during a flyby attack because it's worded differently than ride-by-attack. The ride-by requires you to continue moving in the direction of a charge. Flyby attack permits you to take a standard action at any point during a move action.

The Exchange

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Wonderful news!

The Exchange

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In the example given, Ezren is Crafting a Striking Rune, which goes on weapons. He can either Craft it directly onto a weapon that currently lacks a Striking Rune, or he can craft it onto a blank Runestone, and later Transfer the rune onto a weapon.

The Exchange

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Angel Hunter D wrote:
Having never played 3.5 I don't know where the issues were, but they thought I had to turn my "horse" around to move back the same way, they thought controlling a mount was a move action, etc. They could have just hated my flying, mounted, character charging every turn though.

Ah! The issue's not the mount, it's the flying. Flight does still have an implied facing because of the need to 'turn' your direction of movement.

edit:
Oh, and Ride-by-Attack doesn't allow you to change directions either.

"you may move and attack as if with a standard charge and then move again (continuing the straight line of the charge)."

The Exchange

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Personally, I'm leaning toward Shattered Star. Not out of ease, but because I really wanted to run that and haven't got around to it.

The Exchange

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Kiinyan wrote:
I can see the argument of the Tarrasque coming back from suffocation, since it is a save, but not starvation. Starvation is not a form of attack, and it cannot be healed until food is consumed. As long as the Tarrasque is kept away from food (I believe they cut it up and moved it into a small demiplane) it will eventually die simply because starvation damage cannot be healed
starvation rules wrote:
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort.

The keyword you ignored there was "character." Surely you don't think a bear starts dying 4 days into hibernation?

T is known to nap for centuries between popping out and munching down on a nation or two. Yes, if you lock T up in some inaccessable place, it would *eventually* start taking starvation damage, but not in your lifetime. And eventually it would take lethal damage equal to its hp, and go into a cycle of being dead, then at 1hp, then dead again.

Riiight up until a curious adventurer, or small animal, or whatever, finds its way into your impregnable cell (adventurers are GREAT at breaking into impregnable cells) at which point, jaws go SNAP, T heals to full, and the rampaging begins.

I can't help but think that your "kill T by starvation" solution looks a hell of a lot like T's natural lifecycle.

The Exchange

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Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:
If I get to count each major variation as a seperate curse (the difference between "Thor Smash It!," "Thor Smash It With a Hammer!" and "Thor Smash it In The Crotch," to give some analogy curses as examples of what I am talking about) would bring me to dozens at least.

And don't forget my two favorites: "Thor H. Odinson!" and "Thor Odinson on a Furtherprofanity Pogo Stick!"

The Exchange

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Well, you're stuck in a fuzzy place where you'll have to keep player knowledge and character knowledge separate. At the time Paizo was developing Runelords, the world of Golarian wasn't fleshed out yet. Since much of the world was a mystery, the developers erred on the side of "extra mysterious" for the Empire of Thassilon.

When they got everything hammered out, they became much freer with information about the pre-Darkness societies. As such, the Campaign Setting book contains what I would consider a lot of spoilers for Rise of the Runelords.

For my campaign, at least, this is what would be "common" knowledge, at least among the educated:
* Varisia is dotted with monuments that date to before the Age of Darkness.

* Many monuments contain writing, which is understood by some scholars. The language is called Thassilonian, and refer to an empire called Thassilon.

* Thassilon definitely collapsed before 1 AR. Whether it collapsed before, after, or because of the event that caused the Age of Darkness would not be known.

Beyond that, who knows? I would err on the side of your character knowing nearly nothing...then approach a scholar in-game, and see how much your DM wants to hand out. Sand Point likely has a fellow named Brodert Quint around who has been studying the Old Light, and if you've moved on to other parts of the world, I'm sure there's somebody you could pay for research.

The Exchange

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KaeYoss wrote:
Succubi are demons in D&D. Have always been. Changing decades of game history like that without a good reason definetly counts as something being wrong, unless it was done for good reason.

You know, when 4E was first being announced, and the "succubus issue" was one of the key anti-4E rallying points, I was kind of worked up about the issue myself. I spent several minutes before a session complaining about it to my group, only to be met with blank stares, and looks of "and...?"

My group's Scout shrugged and asks "So, will a knowledge check still tell me which kind of arrow to put through the (censored)'s eye?"

I have to admit, he made a pretty compelling point. Does it really matter which neighborhood in the (unpleasant place outside of the Imaginary "Real" World) she comes from, when the real problem is that she wants to eat your junk?

The Exchange

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CapriciousFate wrote:


[threadjack]
** spoiler omitted **
[/threadjack]

Too awesome. My group's story is pretty good as well, and lead to my questions about fear effects. And you're absolutely right about the stairs being the only way out...

Spoiler:

The 5 of them head down into the basement, and the guards get to work re-barricading the door. They spread out a bit to figure out which room the undeads are hiding in. Sorcerer pops the right door, 3 spawn = 3 will saves all around. Only the sorcerer and cleric save. The aura causes "frightened" not "panicked," so they just want to get as far away as fast as possible. I had no idea the SRD was different from the DMG, so they had to keep fleeing for the full duration. I roll max duration.

Scout is off light a lightning bolt, gets to the top of the stairs, and starts pounding on the door, screaming and begging to be let back out. Guards freak and start looking for more things to pile on the barricade. Rogue catches a flung worm to the face, then runs for the stairs as well, unable to deal with the worm burrowing into him. Fighter clanks along behind. Sorcerer dumps AOE onto two of the spawn while the cleric works on the third, so the sorcerer also gets worm infected while hoping to drop them quickly.

Scout's at the door screaming "Let me out. I'll kill you! I'll kill your children if you don't let me out!" Fighter clomps up from behind and bashes the door open. Scout blows out the front door into a full run (40 foot movement + not hindered by terrain). By the time the fear ran out, she was about 1/6 a mile away...fighter and rogue continue to flee, while the worm burrowed it's way toward the rogue's brain.

Cleric chases 2 turned and wounded Spawn around the complex, hitting them with Spiritual Weapon and conjured creatures. I completely forgot the Spawn's fast healing, or there's no way he would have won...in time, at least. Sorcerer kills the last one, then tries a "disrupt undead" against himself to kill the worm, it's vermin, so no effect. He remembers (incorrectly) that the fighter has a potion that might help, so he runs off after the slower fighter hoping to get the imaginary potion. The guard's morale completely breaks after they see 3 "heroes" come tearing out of the basement, followed by a 4th screaming "It's in my head, it's in my head! Get it out!"

Cleric, all by his lonesome, deals with the spawn (because I forgot about the healing) and runs off to find his friends. He catches up with the sorcerer in time for a dramatic battlefield brain surgery to cut it out with 3 int to spare. Rogue had a much higher base int, and got rescued with a whopping 8 int.

Scout finally made it back after being pulled out of combat for a total of 14 rounds by fear (8 fleeing, 6 returning). She later bought potions of remove fear, only to be panicked by the next fearful thing and discover that per SRD, panicked characters can't hold anything. I think she hates me now ;)