x93edwards's page

I don't think so.

From the Metamagic Feats rules, it says "Metamagic feats cannot be used with all spells. See the specific feat descriptions for the spells that a particular feat can't modify."

Looking at various feats--including Rime Spell, the "can't modify" language is usually "This feat only affects spells..." or "This feat does not affect spells..."

So the spell bring prepared seems to need the [cold] descriptor from the start.

Maybe Preferred Spell might help when you can take it.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you want a talking money familiar, how about tongues?

Impression: I didn't really like this item, as it seemed disjointed and did not flow well.

That's a fair opinion, thanks for commenting.

Why does it "begin to blink, become invisible"? Adding the blink gains nothing since it could not be seen to blink while invisible.

The idea behind blink was for a situation where the user was physically frisked, in which case 50% of the time, the searcher would not be able to discover the item.

Garter of Hidden Fortune: For an extra thousand gold (the price of a longsword +1), I get to blink and become invisible, at-will, as well as have a self-rescuing handy haversack? I think you underpriced this by a fair amount.

James, thanks for taking the time to review my item. I'm afraid my lack of clarity and language probably doomed me from the start. The intention was that the garter and the pouch (not the user) blink and become invisible.

I wonder how many people read it the way you did with the one minute speed reading. Shows you that simplicity beats complexity all the time :)

Even if someone read it correctly I was afraid it was still underpriced.

Garter of Hidden Fortune Aura moderate conjuration; CL 9th Slot none; Price 3,000 gp; Weight 2 lbs. Description Notoriously difficult to find on a captured foe, this narrow band of heavy cloth has a small attached pouch (as a side pouch of a handy haversack, holding up to 2 cubic feet and up to 20 pounds) and is adorned with tiny gems, lace and ribbons arranged to display a cryptic message, words of wisdom, or 25% of the time, the command words. To access the magic of the garter, it must be worn on an appendage.

On command, both the garter and pouch begin to blink, become invisible and no longer detect as magical. Another command word or the wearer’s death ends these effects.

Even with a successful Perception check, anyone frisking the wearer only has a 50% chance to discover the garter. If discovered, the blinking and other effects end.

While not blinking, the garter has the following abilities:

As a swift action, the wearer can instantaneously rearrange the ribbons, gems and lace of the garter to create (or replace) a message of up to 25 words in one language the wearer knows.

To protect the garter from seizure or to provide an ally with a timely item or bit of fortune, as an immediate action, the wearer can direct the garter to teleport to an appendage of a willing creature within 100’ and in line of sight. If the garter has words the creature can read, the creature gains a +2 morale bonus to a single attack roll, skill check or saving throw that it makes before the end of its next turn. This ability may be used three times per day.

Construction Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, blink, heroism, magic aura, secret chest; Cost 1,500 gp

While I didn't make the top 89. I sincerely appreciate that the judges made this list available. I agree that more transparency can only make the end results better.

If the RPG Superstar process can help discover and mold future gaming talent, we are all the better for it.

Thank you.

Orthos wrote:

The Captain's Tricorne - the one that gives you a full crew of invisible servants plus lets you vaporize them to heal your ship.

I remember that item... it was basically the text of the unseen crew spell, which means it was a spell-in-a-can.

The trick is to not list the spell-in-a-can spell you're duplicating in the requirements and hope that the majority of people don't recognize the effect.

Sorry, I may have missed if this was already answered, but is there any chance of a "RPG Superstar 2013 Top 100" title? I think many of us would be honored to have made it at least that far in the eyes of our voting peers.

Sean's post about hyperlinks.

Thanks Curaigh. I think at some point I opened all the advice links on that page and had them bookmarked but never went back and read through all the other posts on that page again.

Well hopefully your goal is not to kill the party, but to challenge them.

Your party is at least ECL 7 and your encounter, by the numbers, is something like CR 10. On the surface this seems like a reasonably challenging encounter.

There are several factors that will affect whether any encounter is a challenge for your group. Things like the group's gear, their atrributes, prepared spells, magic items, the time of the encounter (is it the first or last of several), the enviornment, the encounter takes place, etc.

If you are looking to improve your encounter, you might include ranged attacks, fliers, interesting/difficult terrain and possibly a leader (druid?) to direct the otherwise mindless animal army.

Good luck

How many items have you seen with links to the PRD? Did anyone disqualify an item for linking? It seems that I saw items that did this last year too, but I can't find anything in the rules that says anything about linking one way or the other.

Note that specialized undead only count as double HD for the purposes of their creation, not whether you can control them AFTER they've been created.

Good point. Would you like to weigh in on whether you think that fast zombies are too powerful--or at least so from the perspective of a PC necromancer controlling them?

A fast zombie gets: +10 speed, + 4 dex (over a standard zombie), not staggered and an extra slam attack. On the "balancing" side, it loses the zombie's DR and a caster has to cast haste along with animate dead.

Also, there is a prevailing theory that creating a fast zombie counts as twice the Hit Dice during animate dead. This requirement is listed for a burning skeleton and is presumed to also apply to fast zombies.

Despite the appearance that fast zombie are superior there is no adjustment in CR over a regular zombie.

Should a PC necromancer be able to animate fast zombies or are they too powerful/unbalanced as currently written?

Well spell says you share body with the host soul, do undead have a soul to share with ?

If they have no soul then , would that not mean they have no space for a soul ?

I mean if this is possible then by the same token using this spell on a mindless construct would let you slip in your soul and fight as a construct.

taken further, could you then inhabit any animated object with this spell ?

Just because a creature currently does not possess a soul, doesn't mean it can't be inhabited by one.

Also, technically if this wouldn't work, the spell would call for a willing create with a soul in the target line or else state as such in the description. So, it appears RAW, but as always any particular DM can try to divine RAI or simple decide the do or don't want spells to work however they would like.

Btw, a construct is immune to necromancy effects.

A version of my spell cards are already available on d20pfsrd, in fact they were one of the first people to ask for it.

A fantastic tool by the way, thanks Perram!

Outstanding work! Thanks Brett

I'm sure it'd be a bit of work, and might not be possible through Google Sites, but personally I'd love to see Chopswil's DBs in a format where it had a bunch of check boxes that would make it easier to narrow down a broad search with certain parameters. I know I can just export the DB and then do multiple sorts, but a quick site would be wonderful.

For example, let's say I'm looking for all Medium outsiders that have the fire subtype in only official Paizo products, or all CR 15 creatures of the dragon subtype for all content. It'd be cool to just click on the check boxes and have it sorted for your criteria.

We started work in that direction with the Spell (and other)Filters, but the current limitations of Google Sites made it necessary to build the tool off-site and called via an IFrame. This provides us the ability to do many things you can do on a "regular site", but the implementation into d20pfsrd created some minor annoyances (due to browser security standards) where you couldn't link from d20pfsrd to content inside the iFrame. Some users also claimed the filters were too slow, possible due to the content coming from offsite--or that's at least some of the reasons I heard.

If enough people could live with the tradeoffs, the spell filters could be enhanced substantially.

Is it just me or is www.d20pfsrd.com down atm. Happened at 01.10 BST, saying insufficient privileges.

John is on his way back from PaizoCon. The site should be back up for everyone now. There were some temporary permission issues. Collaborators would probably have still had access through their Google Sites access to the site.

x93edwards wrote:

(or other factors) and assuming a 2 or higher is a hit,

I think the bolded part is going to be the big difference.

Since both weapons gain the benefit of a 20 Strength (and no other factors listed), it essentially doesn't matter what "to hit" number we pick to do the comparison. Essentially, on average, the greatsword will do 1.26 times more damage than the falchion with the criteria provided...

To Hit.GS.......F.....Multiplier of GS over F
2....27.8....21.65....1.284064665
3....26.5....20.70....1.280193237
4....25.2....19.75....1.275949367
5....23.9....18.80....1.271276596
6....22.6....17.85....1.266106443
7....21.3....16.90....1.260355030
8....20.0....15.95....1.253918495
9....18.7....15.00....1.246666667
10...17.4....14.05....1.238434164
11...16.1....13.10....1.229007634
12...14.8....12.15....1.218106996
13...13.5....11.20....1.205357143
14...12.2....10.25....1.190243902
15...10.9.....9.30....1.172043011
16....9.6.....7.75....1.238709677
17....8.3.....6.20....1.338709677
18....6.2.....4.65....1.338709677
19....4.2.....3.10....1.338709677
20....2.1.....1.55....1.338709677

Avg Muliplier of GS over F: 1.262382723

Depends on the amount of standard atacks you make, too.

Agreed. Since the original question asked "Vital Strike (when used)", I didn't factor that in.

Greatsword.

Not factoring in DR (or other factors) and assuming a 2 or higher is a hit, the greatsword would do an average of 27.8 and the falchion would do 21.65. If I get a chance and you're interested, I'll show my math.

Can you submit more than one design?

I hope so, since I wasn't sure which color scheme I wanted to use and subsequently submitted several. I would think since the post didn't say you couldn't, multiple entries should be okay. I suspect the contest was about generating ideas, so it would be odd if the submissions were limited.

... we are extending the contest until April 30, 2012 ..

I have to admit I didn't get a chance to work on my submission until this past weekend and I did feel the tax crunch, but I prioritized and made the deadline! :)

What are the new dates for top 5 and final voting then?

"Excuse me, but do you happen to have any grey poupon?"

Last one to show up to our game is designated Pop B!?€#--or the politically correct designation "beverage coordinator". It's usually a great motivator for players to be punctual. Obviously, the DM is exempt.

One of my favorites was a male gnome PC of mine named Gnat T. Tinkerton. The secret that he kept was that his full name was Gnatalie T. Tinkerton. When he was born his mother couldn't tell that he was a boy, so she gave him a girl's name. Upon discovering her mistake, Gnat got his middle-name, for which he's nearly killed to keep hidden--the "T" stands for "Tiny-tinkle".

You always round down unless the rules say otherwise. The answer is 3.

If you always round down, then the answer is 4. The real question seems to be when to round down. Using the specific text of the spell ... "reduce the penalty by half" and half of 7 is 3.5, rounded down to 3. So we are back to reducing the penalty by 3. 7-3=4.

However, we are left with trying to figure out the RAI, which seems to lead to simply using the Saving Throw line and to ignore the additional text in the spell description about "reducing the penalty by half."

vip00 wrote:

Just like ANY calculation where you are doing math, you should only be rounding the final result of the calculation.

This is actually not correct. Math should only be done with numbers rounded to significant digits before the operations are applied. Doing math without watching significant digits can lead to some unwanted physical results. According to the physics teacher who hammered us on this subject, this sort of thing led to a materials failure in an airplane once. The designer had not used significant digits in his calculating.

Thankfully, confined to the scope of just the Pathfinder rules the worse that can happen is the death of a PC/NPC :)

That is an ability damage effect so it's also a damage effect.

I'm not arguing that there isn't a general rule that when a spell has "Saving Throw <stat> Half", the amount should be reduced to 1/2 the full effect, rounded down. I was pointing out that the Pathfinder revision of the 3.x ray of enfeeblement added a seemingly contradictory line that muddied the interpretation. There is another Pathfinder rule that states "the specific trumps the general." Without the added text, I don't think there would be any confusion.

Also, ray of enfeeblement is not an ability damage effect it is a penalty--there is a distinct difference.

Just like ANY calculation where you are doing math, you should only be rounding the final result of the calculation.

I'll assume we are talking within the context of PF rules and not math in general ;)

Also, under Magic:

Not it does not say that it reduces the damage by half, but that the victim only takes 1/2 the damage (rounded down).

Right, but in the case of ray of enfeeblement, we are not dealing with damage, we are dealing with a penalty. If the spell only had the Saving Throw line as "Fortitude Half", I don't think there would be any confusion, however it specifically has text in the spell description that says "A successful Fortitude save reduces this penalty by half.", which is mathematically something different. However, as Bobson suggested, it may be that the right answer will come out if rounding isn't applied to the intermediate step.

Thanks to all for the responses.

A PC is attacked with a ray of enfeeblement for a penalty of 7 Strength. The PC makes his Fort save reducing the penalty by half (3.5 rounded-down to 3), for an ultimate penalty of 4?

I have a player that believes the penalty should be half as much (i.e. 3) instead of reduced by half.

So, should the ultimate penalty in this case be 3 or 4?

Cloak of the North Star
review:

RC, thanks for taking the time to review my item. I'm sure the judges shared one of more of your observations.

First, this item is a "makes travelling easy" item that judges have said a number of times is not exciting or superstar.

I'm not sure I agree, that it makes "traveling easy", unless you mean in short, limited, combat-situations.

Second, you include the phrase "subject to GM digression", which means you don't know what the effects of the item might be, that shows lack of forethought or carelessness, both of which are very bad.

I'll assume you're referring to the actual phrase I had in the item text "subject to GM discretion." I agree, in hindsight, this could have been left out. Actually, I was aware of many situations regarding this ability, but I edited them out, thinking I could take a short-cut to the word-limit.

Third, you grant free 5-foot steps, which is super powerful. Admittedly, for the price tag I kinda get it, but still. It messes action economy up. Fortunately, it does so in a kinda good way.

Really, this is the ability I should have focused on. The ability to determine true north and the water walk were admittedly "add-ons". Yes, its a powerful ability, that's what I wanted to be "wondrous" about the item. I honestly thought the option for companions to move a paralyzed or unconscious wearer of the cloak around was "handy". Note, this is not the same as a simple 5-foot step.

And last, your last ability is just a tacked on SIAC. It doesn't add anything, or fit with the theme, and make it feel amateur. If you must add in more abilities (which you should try not to anyways), they should be tightly tied to what you already do.

Initially, I envisioned the cloak as being able to animate on its own to swim and carry the wielder through a body of water, but I later opted for water-walk, which again, proved to be "un-Super-Star-like."

Thanks again for the time.

x93edwards wrote:

Cloak of the North Star

*SAK item. Lots of SIAC effects. I find the ability for allies to summon you to their side more annoying than innovative. Great attention to detail in using the template, though.

*Weak Reject.

*Agreed. Reject.

*Rejected.

I truly appreciate the feedback and the fast review. Thanks to all the judges.

Cloak of the North Star
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 7th
Slot shoulders; Price 56,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.
Description
This full-length leather cloak has a large compass, with an eight-pointed star above it, imprinted on the back. Long leather horns fashioned like elven ears rise out of the cloak's upraised collar.

The first benefit of the cloak is that the wearer always knows the location of true north.

As a swift action, the wearer can mentally picture one of the eight compass points, causing the cloak to animate and, through an undulating motion of leather, carry the wearer 5 feet in that direction. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity, ignores difficult terrain and works whether the wearer is standing, sitting or prone. This ability does not work if the wearer is grappled, but so long as the cloak itself isn’t restrained movement may be possible in other cases, subject to GM discretion.

Additionally, an ally within 30' of the wearer can, as a standard action, speak one of the eight compass directions followed by the word "star", at which point the "ears" on the cloak perk up as if listening and then the cloak dutifully carries the wearer 5 feet in the indicated direction as if the wearer had activated the ability herself.

In any event, the cloak can never move the wearer more than 5 feet in any round.

Lastly, as a standard action, the wearer can gain the benefits of water walk. This effect lasts for a total of up to 10 minutes per day. This duration need not be continuous, but it must be used in 1 minute increments.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, adjuring step, know direction, unseen servant, water walk; Cost 28,000 gp

Somewhat off topic, but Sean, I've been reading the monsters from 2010 and you often provide a link for "advice for using the word will." That link doesn't seem to work anymore (it redirects to Paizo home page). Can you repost it for the benefit of us rookies?

Thanks

Here

A lot of it's just commonsense. If you're doing a pair of magical lenses, you should look up what's been done with items that affect the wearer's eyes. If you're doing something with boots, assess all the items in the Core Rulebook for boots, sandals, slippers, etc. But, if you really want a good guide, follow the Body Slot Affinities table from 3.5...

The lack of Body Slot Affinities is a pet peeve of mine and it's something I'd like to see clarified for RPG Superstars and Pathfinder in general. I personally liked Body Slot Affinity (B.S.A) from 3.5, but found that it was conspicuously absent from the Pathfinder rules. Unofficially, I've read/listened to the judges say that they have certain expectations for wondrous items of certain types, which is fair, but given that Pathfinder--to the best of my knowledge--doesn't have B.S.A, it's interesting to hear these expectations stand anyway. I'd really hate to learn entries were disqualified because of B.S.A expectations when by all appearances the Pathfinder rules seem to have purposefully removed them--maybe to potentially increase the variety of magic items?

On the other hand, I would be ecstatic to hear someone say, that B.S.A was left out of the core rules as an oversight, in which case I'd hope to see an errata.

In any event, I'm grateful that I learned about the unofficial B.S.A expectations as well as a wealth of other do's/don'ts from existing wondrous items as well as the fantastic threads and podcasts that were made available to us from the judges and others on this board.

Relevant rules from the Magic section of the PRD ...

AIMING A SPELL
"Some spells restrict you to willing targets only. Declaring yourself as a willing target is something that can be done at any time (even if you're flat-footed or it isn't your turn). Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing, but a character who is conscious but immobile or helpless (such as one who is bound, cowering, grappling, paralyzed, pinned, or stunned) is not automatically willing."

RANGE

Touch: You can touch up to 6 willing targets as part of the casting, but all targets of the spell must be touched in the same round that you finish casting the spell. If the spell allows you to touch targets over multiple rounds, touching 6 creatures is a full-round action.

On the PRD, you will find the new combat maneuvers under additional rules under the Advanced Players Guide section. I'd link you, but I am on the phone.

Here:

I thought d20pfsrd.com was pretty good about labeling 3rd party content, but I was surprised to not be able to look up the "drag" combat maneuver at the table because it wasn't in the Pathfinder PHB. What's up with that?

Link to Combat Maneuvers section

The Section 15 copyright notices have been added to the rules for Dirty Trick, Drag, Reposition and Steal under the Combat Maneuvers section on d20pfsrd.

An Ettin's melee attack is listed as "Melee 2 flails +12/+7 (2d6+6)
" and it has the following special attack:

Superior Two-Weapon Fighting (Ex): An ettin fights with a flail or javelin in each hand. Because each of its two heads controls an arm, the ettin does not take a penalty on attack or damage rolls for attacking with two weapons.

An Ettin's BAB is +7, so that alone would give it two attacks. Wielding a weapon in its offhand would normally give a creature a 3rd attack, but since that's not listed am I to take it that means the Ettin has four total attacks? +12/+7 with each arm?

What a great gift.

The Beginner Box has two adventures, plus the ingredients to create new ones.

In the Hero's Handbook there is a solo adventure titled, "The Skeleton King's Crypt" that drops new players right into the action.

The Game Master's Guide has an adventure titled, "Black Fang's Dungeon" and is for four 1st-level characters.

Paizo has also provided additional resources for the Beginner Box with a free GM and Player Pack PDFs. In the GM Pack, is another 1st-level adventure titled, "Deadly Mine".

On section G.. I dont have anything in imp initiative, Attack bonus or Attack Bonus besides Melee and Ranged. What is that for?

If you take the Improved Initiative Feat you would put a +4 in the box of the same name in section G.

Your Attack Bonus for both Melee and Ranged Weapons are +0 for a 1st level Rogue. Page 24 of the Hero's Handbook tells you to write +0 to Base Attack bonus in section F, but I'm not sure where it tells you to copy that into Section G.

In sect H my AC is +4 because of my chain mail, no shield,3 dex mod, and 0 magic + 10 = 17 right?

As a Rogue, your PC would be proficient with Light Armor, so I think you meant to say "Chain Shirt" instead of "Chain Mail", which is a Medium armor. As you listed a +4 bonus, that is further proof. So, if that's true, your math is correct.

Also as a Dw Rogue, I get 8 ranks in Section D skills right?

As a Rogue your PC would have 8 ranks plus a modifier based on your INT. So if your PC had a 14 Intelligence (which is +2 INT), the total skill ranks would be 8 + 2 = 10. By the same token, a negative INT modifier would subtract skill ranks.

Also, what is a link to some of the beginner box mistakes?

I don't know if there is official errata published yet, but Paizo has release additional material for the Beginner Box if you don't have it yet...

Beginner Box Player Pak

Beginner Box GM Kit

There is also this thread discussing Beginner Box corrections.

Good luck.

don't forget your old friend Spell DB [sniff]

download as excel and sort to your heart's content

Thank you for the great work on the Spell DB. It's especially useful if you need more advanced filtering/sorting options.

Complicating my analysis of this question is the soothsayer's raiment.

This +1 chaimail essentially has the same effect as a ring of revelation --actually the armor is much better, but of the crafting feats, it only requires the Craft Magic Arms and Armor.

On a side note, I think the soothsayer's rainment is poorly written/designed since it is much better than a lesser ring of revelation and costs the same price. In my game I would say the listed raiment acts like a lesser ring of revelation and I would create greater and superior versions of the armor.

He would need Craft Magic Arms and Armor AND Forge Ring in order to do what you propose.

I say this due to the existing precedent of weaponized staves and rods requiring two item creation feats to make.

Thanks for your response.

Yes, I know that for the case of putting the effect into the sword he couldn't bypass the need for the Craft Magic Arms and Armor, but I'm not sure I'm convinced the rules call for the need for Forge Ring. Now mind you I want that to be the case, but it just doesn't seem to be.

For instance, it seems pretty easy to move the effects of a ring of invisibility into some other item, like say a belt using Craft Wondrous Item. Would you still hold that Forge Ring would be required to do that?

Apparently under Pathfinder (as opposed to 3.5) it's easy and trivial to make any and all kinds of magic items by bypassing prerequisites and taking 10 on Spellcraft checks. Also with no body affinity rules, I have players dumping all kinds of standard items into other kinds of gear. I guess I don't really have too much of a problem with it, but I wondered what other DM's out there think.

For instance, I have a player that wants to craft a ring of revelation into his PC's sword (okay, it's not underwear). I can't find any reason why this can't be done but then I have to ask if the designers meant for the powers of certain items (like rings) to be limited, since normally you could only have two rings. However, with the crafting rules you could craft the effects of a dozen rings into one or more other items.

This also brings up the issue of why have any other feat than Craft Wondrous Item. If a PC doesn't have Forge Ring, then just make a belt of invisibility or whatever.

Finally, I had a player bring up the logic from the crafting rules that if his PC crafted the effects of an item that doesn't take up a body slot (say an ioun stone) and puts it into an item that does take up a body slot it should only cost half as much as constructing an actual ioun stone. Now, clearly I know (and enforced) the fact to judge items by their use and not blindly following the "formula", but there are just so many problems with the magic item creation rules (some of which I know where inherited) that I think that Pathfinder aggravated the issue as opposed to making it better.

its not a matter of items. Its a matter of magic types. Typically similar (or identical) don't stack, but instead overlap. Same reason mundane armor and mage armor don't stack. Same types, though different sources.

In this case the ioun stones simply provide an untyped? ability that "gives the wearer the ability to regenerate 1 point of damage every 10 minutes." So I don't clearly type type coming into play.

Do the effects of two or more pearly white spindle ioun stones (providing 1 hp of regeneration every 10 minutes) stack?

So two stones would provide 2 hps every 10 minutes?

Since two (or more) stones would technically be different sources, I'm not sure what would stop them from stacking.

Also, just in general, I didn't find anything that discusses whether regeneration from different magic item sources would only count the higher of the sources or if they would all apply at whatever rate they had. I know there is a rule for multiple versions of the same spell effect at different level (where the highest applies), but not sure if that meant magic items as well.

Thanks.

Sure, you could use Snaggit or a similar screen capture progam or simply do a screen capture and crop.

Use these options for the given PDF Reader:
Adobe Acrobat X: Edit > Copy Image, then draw a box
Foxit Reader 3.1.4: Tool> Snapshot (or Keyboard Shortcut Alt-7 or click the camera icon on the menu bar)

Windows:
Built-In Screen Capture: Print screen key for full screen or Alt-Print Screen key to capture active window.

In Vista or Windows 7, there is a Snipping Tool that I think is part of the Windows Tablet Package.

Apple:
Built in Sceen Capture: Command - Shift - 4, Draw a box around the image