mishima's page

Vigan
Human (LG)

Backstory:

Vigan and his newlywed wife were constructing a homestead in a remote region 3 years ago when a dark series of events occurred which changed everything. One morning, a misty portal manifested itself inside the structure, eradicating all matter, including a portion of the house, the ground it stood on, and his wife.

The incident was investigated by regional powers and attracted a few mystic scholars. The most common explanation provided was that the energy was the result of a planar influx. However, Vigan began to suspect that he was not being given the full details, perhaps being dismissed as a non-academic peasant. This frustration turned to public outrage and desperation, and finally violent crime against the investigators and the local government. The judiciary was not without sympathy, and so Vigan was exiled rather than imprisoned.

Vigan joined the Order of the Red Star initially hoping that his emotions surrounding the loss of his wife could be tamed. As time within the group passed however, he started to note certain passages in the ancient writings which he thought resembled the bizarre incident. The source of this dedication to study is unknown to his fellow monks, and would be frowned upon as a passion driven obsession.

The Order was recently employed as a source of cheap labor to construct a watchtower on the outskirts of Kaer Maga.

(Traits: Exile, Scholar of the Great Beyond)

Mechanics:

Fairly standard monk mechanically. Similar to a two-weapon fighter in combat with grappling capability, good saves, perception, sense motive, and knowledge (planes). Lawful good human. Character sheet is complete.

I want to be able to rage, not just have the class feature. I was originally thinking something like a berserk cleric. The rage subdomain is too late for me though, probably wont go past 6th or 7th level anyways. So I was thinking taking 2 levels of barb for a rage power, then the rest cleric. But if I can get rage with a straight fighter I'd probably take more like 4 fighter levels.

I seem to remember there being a way a fighter could get rage without dipping into barbarian but now I can't find it. Am I imagining things?

The pfsrd has a bunch of errors. I think that's one of them. Paizo's is more accurate, but a little less easy to navigate in my opinion.

Hi goodwicki, I think youre right. But if you look at the link I posted to the picture of my graph, you can see why I thought there was an extra 5 ft. Its because of the parabolic shape. of a jump. If the @ was standing right next to the red and jumped over the e it would definitely enter the red zone. But mechanically I think you are correct.

If you read "The Crystal Cave" by Mary Stewart, you will most likely do a bard. :) Great Merlin book, and great book in general.

I would resist taking those feats personally, and there is also allies granting the target cover often. So you would need Imp precise as well.

Psychological reasons granted. :)

Ranged touch attack magic really sucks in my opinion. If I had to choose between a blaster spell with a save and one with a ranged touch, I would take the save spell 100% of the time. Especially at low levels. If the target is in melee and you are behind the ally you are looking at trying to hit ~16 AC with a -4 penalty to your attack. Thats ok for the little school powers and cantrips but for a slot? Single target? Too risky for my blood.

Thanks for response. I did mean defend, not guard, in the OP.

So, I can assume the animal companion starts with many tricks? The druid did max handle animal and even took skill focus (handle animal).

I seem to remember in 3.5 they started with multiple tricks but I couldn't find anywhere that said so explicitly.

The situation is that a Darkmantle surprised the druid grabbed and constricted so that the druid was disabled. This was in the surprise round. Next round the Darkmantle constricted again and so the druid is dying. Now finally its the druid's turn. Didn't stabilize. I'm wondering what to do with the animal companion. "Attack" was its bonus trick but obviously no one can give the command. Does it just stand there? If so I think "guard" is way better as a first trick now, lol.

Am I correct that animal companions only start play with 1 trick total, the bonus one?

Also, if the druid totally dies, what happens to the animal companion? I know its a GM discretion thing, just curious how people would handle it. This is in a 1st level dungeon.

I would allow players to start with whatever they can afford.

Although, do note that it's "starting wealth" not "starting gold." So a 1st level scroll is worth 25gp and accounts for 25gp worth of the character's wealth. That is, I do not allow characters to craft at half value at creation.

Nice, I think I'll do it that way, too.

I was wondering how most people would think about using leftover starting gold to scribe scrolls to have as starting equipment for new characters. Would most people allow that or say no you gotta do it in game? Just curious.

The bonuses to acrobatics only apply to jumps. Its a bottleneck, only 5 ft wide, so the only options are jump completely over the enemy, or move through the enemies space somehow. He has a better chance with a huge jump than an opposed acrobatics for movement at +5.

Also, it is an air elemental bloodline sorcerer who took those spells for thematic reasons (like the wind is helping him be so fast, etc). He wants to be on the other side so he can blast (ranged touch attack) without the cover penalty to his roll.

But yeah, just a hypothetical situation. I can vaguely remember the 1/4 rule karkon mentioned now.

Its a caster with expeditious retreat and jump spells active, who also has a decent dex and skill focus (acrobatics).

I'm wondering how to handle when a player wants to jump over not only a creature, but all its vertical threatened squares as well. Do you combine vertical and horizontal jump DCs somehow? As far as I can tell, for a creature of 5/5 space/reach, this would require a 10 ft vertical and a 30 ft horizontal, with a total movement cost of 8 squares.

See this picture.

Disrupt Undead deals positive energy damage. So can it be used with the elemental bloodline sorcerer's bloodline arcana to be converted into that energy type?

So...if I disarm attempt with a ranseur from 5 feet away without the improved disarm feat, is the enemy denied the AoO since it doesn't threaten me?

I'm not new to GMing, but am so for Pathfinder. Just this week I did CotE and Master of the Fallen Fortress for my first time GMing Pathfinder (to myself). Both awesome, but I have to say Master of the Fallen Fortress is probably better for first time (and slightly more awesome). However, it requires more creativity on your part to set up the story and "pre dungeon" stuff. There is also a youtube video for it. If the players are somewhat experienced they would almost certainly prefer Master of the Fallen Fortress in my opinion.

Ok, that's awesome, just wanted to make sure I was doing it right. Thank you.

Starts with grab. :) Also goes large at 4th...

Still wondering about the AoO.

I'm also curious how most GMs would adjucate it using grab all the time without a handle animal check.

I'm sure this has been asked before, but does the snake constrictor animal companion get the +4 bonus to grapple from having the grab ability? So a 1st level snake constrictor with agile maneuvers could have a +8 to grapple? Also, does the grab ability in this case provoke or does it count as an attack (special attack)?

Ah, thank you for those points.

Would guidance apply its bonus to animal empathy, since animal empathy functions like the diplomacy skill?

I wonder what a CR1 balor looks using the reduction rules from bestiary...

I was wondering if some people might like to post some awesome/unique 1st level encounters, with pertinent battlefield details. :) For a 4 person party, just one encounter.

Or just stories about some amazing battles.

Overrun is a separate standard action taken part DURING a move action, so I think your move would provoke regardless of your overrun not provoking.

So, just to clarify...

[Elf] ----> [Dwarf][Orc]

The Orc gets a +4 AC AND the Elf gets a -4 to attack. That's what I was thinking.

If the orc is fighting with your dwarf buddy, you have to take extra care to not hit your dwarf buddy, so you take a -4 penalty to your attack roll.

Wait Grick, are you saying there is no soft cover bonus for this instance? Why?

It wouldn't cancel out Hayato, it makes it harder to hit. Its not technically a +8 to AC, but is effectively. You need both the precise shot feats to ignore this. Or, you need the first one and the ability to move to a place where your line of fire is clear. This means being on the same row as the enemy usually. Or your melee bud could 5ft step away after his turn to give you a free shot.

Also an optional rule is that when more than half the target is visible the soft cover bonus drops to just a +2.

Are you running this solo?

Yeah, I use the Mythic GM Emulator to make GM calls and player decisions where my knowledge of the module would bias it. I know, it cant really compare and taints all the statistical analysis comparisons or whatever but its still really nice. I can also still do off the wall improv type stuff by feeding it my questions, which is the best part. For this run though nothing much like that happened. I also didn't do the random events mechanic this time, which alters scenes in an interpretative way, since I wanted to stick fairly close to the mod.

A lot of opportunities were there however, especially in the top level where it has the exit to the balcony and the collapsing hazard. It makes me really want to hear stories about people who have done that last fight with the hazard triggering...

But let me go try some MAD characters, too. :)

So today I did Master of the Fallen Fortress with a monk, rogue, and druid all using 15 pt buy. I was going to try a paladin too but couldnt get motivated to make a char sheet.

You haters probably won't even believe me but the monk was the star, his grapple and successive pin basically won the final fight. He was an elf with 15,14,11,10,14,10 as stats. Took power attack and improved grapple. The boss in question had a CMD of 16. The druid, animal comp, and rogue took out his crocodile while this was going on.

The druid for the rest of the module was pretty impressive...I decided not to do a 4 man party because of the animal companion (cheetah). Biggest "pinch" I got into was making it into a room with 3 javelin throwers with readied actions. Then I realized I could go total defense before moving...

Druid dropped below 0 once from some huge nonlethal electricity. Monk dropped once because I was being retarded. I really need to remember to always have some kind of ranged weapon ready

Its true that module is standard fare but it was still sweet as hell.

Thanks, I was thinking the movement was lost in both cases for whatever reason.

I don't see any guidelines on where to place a rogue who has failed an acrobatics check to move through a threatened square when the movement is out of an ally occupied square.

_A
e_
__

Rogue is coming from the right and passing through A, trying to get north of e. I was thinking that he would go one square to the left of A but that would mean he isn't threatened by e which seems odd.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Nevermind, I guess that's fairly clear. So is it better for a rogue to open a door using stealth as part of the move or let someone else do it so he can go undetected in the surprise round?

For 1, do I roll stealth for everyone even though no one is using stealth? What am I rolling perception against there?

Also, that's quite interesting about the spiral stairs.

I feel like I keep getting stuck behind doors fighting monsters. I'm wondering if I am doing some things right.

1. Player opens a door, there are some hostile monsters in the room. Do I roll perception for surprise round even though no one is using stealth, or just roll initiative? How do you handle something like "I shut the door real quick".

2. Player opens a door, there is hostile monster who was aware of the party standing right next to the door, now adjacent to the door opener. The door opener rolls an initiative way lower than the rest of the party, effectively blocking the monster to other melee. Possible moves? Overrun seems perfect, can do it as part of a move and end up in flank with the door opener. Where do you go if you fail though?

3. Party aware of hostiles in the room, wants to surprise attack. I am assuming the opening of the door is NOT counted against anyone since initiative hasn't been rolled yet.

4. In real castle fortifications, which is better, a door that opens in to a stairwell, or one that opens into the adjacent room? My gut tells me the latter because then it could be barred from inside, and when open would still provide cover to the one in that square.

I just feel like something is off about the way I'm doing initiative maybe.

Maybe a greater question is why has this spell endured? What's its history within the game?

Santa's natural attack is with "claws".

I consider myself a fairly creative dude, but struggle to think of uses for magic mouth. I was wondering if anyone had some good stories using magic mouth.

I can't find reference now but I was under the impression that quite a few bestiary monsters use it as well.

I don't allow for more than one stat below 8 (before racial adjustments)

I like that, too.

I also think that 1000 words is fairly trivial to be honest. Still, I would probably occasionally be the one who got the 10pt buy because I didn't want to mess with it. I like off the cuff characters. I wouldn't consider my character crippled. As mentioned, its about a +1 difference. So if you have two fighters, one with weapon focus and one without it the one without is crippled? Dice don't care much about +1...

Along those lines, its easy to have a false perception of self-efficacy in this game, either positive or negative. Increasing the odds by getting your mods up and up doesn't really matter as much as people assume. Sometimes dice go 2,4,4,2,6 and mods don't matter at all.

I mean, everyone works on their characters sheet, I realize that. I think most people just assume that when they see their friend doing awesome damage or whatever it must be because they worked harder on designing their stats.

I mean dumb fighters. Weak Wizards. uncouth Barbarians.

That's what I thought you meant. That's not my experience with it. But I also go out of my way to make interesting/fun characters that I personally enjoy, so maybe that's the difference here. Sitting on some prereq feat for 5 levels so I can be optimized later is the opposite of a game to me. But yeah, obviously if you care about stats 15 pt is not for you.

But let me go try some MAD characters, too. :)

Icyshadow, the word "stereotype" is so contrary to my experience with 15pt. At the very least, his definition of "stereotype" must be much broader than mine. But its true, 15pt is not that interesting. However his statement really caught my attention because it is so strikingly odd to me. Perhaps its less of a right vs wrong thing like you were trying to say and more of a perception of anomaly thing. Is that still the wrong attitude? ;)

Talonhawke, you need to try it sometime so you can discover that what you said is not the case.

I've been running modules solo against myself with 15 point buy 1st level characters. Its incredibly fun and is helping me learn. Actually I use the "elite array" which is a set 15,14,13,12,10,8 before mods. Its probably balancing the fact that I coordinate my party tactics in a way that a real group never would.

I just did the final fight in Crypt of Everflame with all lvl 1s...wiz true strike dirty tricked (blinded) Asar so the 2h fighter could pick up his disarmed great club and get the final blow. Party did not have full resources going into it.

I haven't tried paladins and monks yet, but can somewhat understand the limitation perceived. Statting a cleric is...disappointing/humorous using elite array to say the least. Well, maybe I just havent figured out a good way to do it yet.

Another theory I have is that using elite array or 15pt buy doesn't matter as much at 1st level as it does at say, 10th. That's because dice rolls are way more unpredictable at 1st so a -3 or +3 one way or the other is really pretty insignificant. Still matters for feat selection though I suppose.

Perhaps I'll start using that instead then!

Ok, thanks for the quick response. That bestiary entry is worded differently in the online PFSRD and has a period where the comma is.

I'm fighting plague zombies that explode when they "die". So this is 0 and not -Cha?

Do undead just die at 0 hp since they have no constitution score?