A player once claimed that he (a wizard) was able to keep his invisibly and shield spells going we he was unconscious and bleeding. That the crazy part is that he claimed that the the thugs who had beaten him into near death would have to make DC40 perception checks to find him. Despite the fact they had, you know been beating him to death. The rules (at least as he argued) supported that.
I could vaguely imagine a justification for that:
When your wizard folded like a house of cards, they could no longer hit him in the space where he previously was.
When you are facing invisible opponents, and you suddenly can't put your hands on them, your first assumption is that they slipped away.
Of course, they might have heard the wizard hit the floor. I would run a VERY basic perception check to either hear the falling wizard, or to accidentally notice him by bumping their foot into his fallen body. Like....DC 10-15 at most. Heck, this is more of a wis check for them to try to find you in the square they last...felt? ...you at.
Now, onto the spells...since you can cast invisibility on random objects or creatures, I think it still works when you are unconscious. Shield doesn't have a duration of concentration either. So unless I am forgetting some side rule about how buffs wear off while you are dying, I think it is fine.
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Yeah, going unconscious while invisible is one of the worst things that can happen to you. Your party members don't know you went unconscious (unless they can see through invisibility), so they have no idea you even need help, much less be able to find you. Meanwhile you're bleeding out and only a successful constitution check will save you.
Or a channel. You need to see them to exclude them, so if you're invisible on the ground you can soak up the channel.
At 10th level a ninja with the Acrobatic Master and High Jump ninja tricks effectively makes acrobatics check to jump at 1/4 the normal DC.
Lets see how silly this is.
1. ninja has maxs ranks in acrobatics(+15 untyped(this includes dex and class skill)), uses a ki point(+20 untyped), has wizard cast jump spell on him(+30 enhance), and has a ring of jumping(+5 competence). meaning when the ninja jumps it rolls 1d20 +70.
2. The long jump DC is equal to every 5ft is +5 to the DC check, or every 20ft = +20 to the DC. Now reduce to 1/4 of that so the DC to jump. The DC to jump 320ft is now DC80 for the ninja who takes a 10 to meet that DC.
high jump is also something silly but I don't want to math more. I know this cannot be done in combat but as far as i know the rules say nothing about limited movement out of combat. I have always found this a tad silly.
why he's not distracted probably for this example and thus can take 10...
At 10th level a ninja with the Acrobatic Master and High Jump ninja tricks effectively makes acrobatics check to jump at 1/4 the normal DC.
Lets see how silly this is.
1. ninja has maxs ranks in acrobatics(+15 untyped(this includes dex and class skill)), uses a ki point(+20 untyped), has wizard cast jump spell on him(+30 enhance), and has a ring of jumping(+5 competence). meaning when the ninja jumps it rolls 1d20 +70.
2. The long jump DC is equal to every 5ft is +5 to the DC check, or every 20ft = +20 to the DC. Now reduce to 1/4 of that so the DC to jump. The DC to jump 320ft is now DC80 for the ninja who takes a 10 to meet that DC.
high jump is also something silly but I don't want to math more. I know this cannot be done in combat but as far as i know the rules say nothing about limited movement out of combat. I have always found this a tad silly.
I have no problem with that. It is level 10 after all and they've invested two tricks into doing it.
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He's also investing a ki point, a decent amount of gold, and a spell. Godspeed, jumping ninja. Good luck on the return flight.
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Yeah, I don't see anything weird about a guy who's naturally good at jumping and getting multiple magical/supernatural boosts to his jumping ability being able to jump a long way.
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Heh. Now I'm picturing a ninja jumping from one end of the town to another, back and forth, over and over again.
Farmer Joe: "What's she doing?"
Adventurer Al: "She's testing how far she can jump."
Ninja Natalia (distant): "THREE HUNDRED THIRTY FEET AT MOST!"
Adventurer Al: "See? It's important to know that stuff. THAT'S GREAT, NATE!"
Farmer Joe: "...Okay, fine, but why does your wizard keep casting spells next to the blacksmith?"
Adventurer Al: "He needs to know how good he is at concentrating. In the middle of combat, he needs to know that sort of thing."
Farmer Joe: "But Blacksmith Bob's gonna hit the guy if he keeps it up!"
Adventurer Al: "Good! That'll make the simulation a lot more accurate."
Farmer Joe: "..."
Adventurer Al: "He may not want to actually hit, though. Wesley's got some crazy wards on."
Farmer Joe: "..."
Adventurer Al: "Though come to think of it, he hasn't gotten those tested recently, either..."
Blacksmith Bob (distant): "AAAAAAAAAUGH!"
Farmer Joe: "Why do we allow you people in our town, again?"
Adventurer Al: "Hang on, I just remembered I needed to test my sword accuracy versus my bow accuracy. Would you mind putting on this full plate for a moment?"
No problem jumping 320', but it's about 7d6 damage on the landing...
(altitude is 1/4 of hight, so he's 80' high, controlled jump to ignore the first 10')
You wanna jump that far, great, but invest in Feather Fall first or take your lumps.
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Since we are talking about jumping, I have a new favourite 1st level spell and it is Cheetah's Sprint because this spell is better than jump a lot of the time and allows you to charge crazy distances if you have a high base speed.
On Topic: It's kinda weird/cool that if you are a gnome with the fey magic and pyromaniac traits you can select Recharge innate magic as your 1st level druid spell and depending on how the DM rules it could basically have 6 rechargable 0 level Sla's and Produce Flame as a rechargable Sla indefinitely.
On the plus side, he is the greatest basketball player you have ever seen lol
No problem jumping 320', but it's about 7d6 damage on the landing...
(altitude is 1/4 of hight, so he's 80' high, controlled jump to ignore the first 10')
You wanna jump that far, great, but invest in Feather Fall first or take your lumps.
he wouldn't be able to land during his turn...
At 10th level a ninja with the Acrobatic Master and High Jump ninja tricks effectively makes acrobatics check to jump at 1/4 the normal DC.
...I have always found this a tad silly.
In a game where many classes can outright fly at the 5th level, having the ability to jump really really far at the 10th level is actually a pretty mediocre ability. If anything it's coming too late in your career, since Winged Boots are affordable at this level if you really care about unfettered mobility.
If there's something weird about these extreme jumping, it's the fall damage - or rather, the lack of "jumping" damage. The amount of force your body would experience to actually jump that high would be equal (slightly less, actually, due to air resistance) to the force you'd experience after falling from the apex of your jump.
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he wouldn't be able to land during his turn...No problem jumping 320', but it's about 7d6 damage on the landing...
(altitude is 1/4 of height, so he's 80' high, controlled jump to ignore the first 10')
You wanna jump that far, great, but invest in Feather Fall first or take your lumps.
Erik the Cleric: ...Where's Rita?
Freddy the Fighter: She's trying out that new high jump trick of hers.Erik: Wait, what? Really?
Katelyn the Kineticist: Look, uh, I can fly with some controlled kinetic blasts, Erik and Ed can fly, you have celestial chain mail, Fred... how's Rita gonna survive the landing?
Rita the Rogue: (there's a Doppler effect on her scream) ...eyaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHH! (GRUNTCH)
Rita's Thrown Cure Critical Wounds Potion: (falls and lands on Rita's head a second later)
Rita: ....Perfect landing! ^_^
Erik the Cleric: ...Where's Rita?
Freddy the Fighter: She's trying out that new high jump trick of hers.
Erik: Wait, what? Really?
Katelyn the Kineticist: Look, uh, I can fly with some controlled kinetic blasts, Erik and Ed can fly, you have celestial chain mail, Fred... how's Rita gonna survive the landing?
Rita the Rogue: (there's a Doppler effect on her scream) ...eyaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHH! (GRUNTCH)
Rita's Thrown Cure Critical Wounds Potion: (falls and lands on Rita's head a second later)
Rita: ....Perfect landing! ^_^
Pretty much This.
Edit: didn't realize this video was NSFW sorry guys :(
Oooo an 8-bit theatre joke. Very classy.
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The half-orc going first isn't the problem. The problem is the instigator being flat-footed. The flat-footed condition implies that someone is surprised or unprepared. How can you be unprepared for a fight that your action started in the first place? Can someone else beat you to the first punch, Old West gunslinger style? Sure, but there's absolutely no reason that the instigator should be surprised in a fight.
Greedo drew, but Han shot first. And Greedo was probably pretty surprised because he thought he had the drop when he instigated the encounter.
"Dexterity measures agility, reflexes, and balance." (Core definition of the ability). Your Dex mod modifies your initiative which determines when you get to act in combat or a non-combat encounter. This applies even if on your action you solve an equation, try to remember something, or hum a tune. If Stephen Hawking was in your group he would probably be the last one, owing to his poor physical coordination, to recognize some cosmic phenomenon as it manifests.
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Me: Okay, Snorb's ultimate celebrity D&D party, roll for intiative! (d20s roll; whir and a d20 roll) Okay, let's go around the table starting from the left.
Patrick Stewart: I have a 14!
Anne Hathaway: Ugh. Nine here.
Matt Smith: (making a small Daern's Instant Fortress out of dice) Oh, I got an 11! :D
Bill Nye: I've got 16... of SCIENCE~!
Stephen Hawking: (vocoder) I rolled a natural 20. Add four for Improved Initiative, two for the Reactionary trait, and subtract five for my impaired Dexterity, for a total of twenty-one. I believe Black Jack the halfling rogue goes first.
Me: .....I need to spend my Thursday nights playing with another group.
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Ultimate Campaign contains downtime and kingdom rules for building universities and magical academies, but there is no teaching skill per se. There is Profession (teacher) but it simply lets you earn half your profession check in gold pieces per week of work. You can also answer simple (DC 10) or complex (DC 15+) questions about your profession (which is teacher, not the subject you are teaching) so you can tell people how tenure works, how to write grant proposals, and why faculty meetings are a waste of time. Even the expanded profession rules in Unchained don't cover the use of this skill to impart knowledge to another (not even to grant temporary skill ranks, such as helping someone cram for an exam).
Inner Sea Magic has more detailed rules for magic academies with actual skill DCs, but it is all on you as the student. You pay the entrance fee, you make the required skill checks, you collect and spend the prestige points. There is no input in this process from the skills and expertise of your instructors, who again, are apparently there just to collect a paycheck.
It is either a glaring omission or an unintentional near-perfect simulation of how a university actually works.
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There is no input in this process from the skills and expertise of your instructors, who again, are apparently there just to collect a paycheck.It is either a glaring omission or an unintentional near-perfect simulation of how a university actually works.
Sounds about right to me. Especially if there are rules for how professors can earn more grant money by ignoring students.
Oh - while you gain no exp etc as a student - you should be able to earn unnecessary certifications so that you're actually allowed to work even very basic and non-combat magic within city limits.
Potion brewers need a union! They don't make any profit at all on their potions, not even so much as a copper.
The rules say: "The costs for materials and ingredients are subsumed in the cost for brewing the potion: 25 gp × the level of the spell × the level of the caster." And there is a table laying out the numbers.
Elsewhere, the rules say: "The price of a potion is equal to the level of the spell × the creator's caster level × 50 gp." And again there is a table laying out the numbers.
All well and good! Except the numbers are identical in both tables.
The table for prices says it's 50 gp to buy a finished potion of Cure Light Wounds. Caster level 1 x Spell level 1 x 50 = 50. Correct!
The table for costs says it's 50 gp to buy the ingredients for the same potion. Caster Level 1 x Spell Level 1 x 25 = ... 50 gp? Bzzt.
Actually both those tables are for cost, not price.
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There are no rules for Burrow. How's that for stupid?
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You can take a -4 on attack rolls with a chainsaw (Technology Guide) to do non-lethal damage with it.
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A small thing that came up after I let my players use the ACG. The Wild Whisperer druid's wild shape ability is extraordinary, rather than supernatural. The wild whisperer is just so good at pretending to be various animals that there is no practical difference between them and an actual member of the species they're pretending to be.
And you know what? It's still there after the errata.
And the errata for the archetype had a major grammatical error.
We're going for this. Elhorn of Baltim can wild shape in an anti magic field now.
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There's no impact physics in the game. No matter how hard you hit someone, unless you have a feat to cause it, they are never staggered or knocked back a square.
The very first time he played pathfinder, my friend, who possesses an absolutely beautiful and glorious beard (I mention it now since to imagine him without the beard is a mortal sin in at least five major religions), noticed that chalk had no written weight.
Naturally, he decided to equip his very first character with 100 pieces of chalk.
Since battleships also don't have a written weight, he kept talking about buying a battleship and putting it in his pocket, but no one would ever let him do it.
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On that note, we had a gnome paladin try to blind/distract an Orc with "dancing lights", yet as our GM stated the RAW is that it did nothing. I get not letting light from a 0 level spell blind you... but it seems like visible light should be able to do something other than just letting you see... hell according to RAW it seems like you could just essentially gimmick darkvision by enchanting a pair of contacts to be the equivalent of an ever-burning torch...
It's unfortunate that the Flare cantrips set the precedent that a mere -1 to attack is worth an entirely separate spell. In addition to being weak even by the standards of cantrips, it really constrains a GM who wants to offer circumstance bonuses like this for creative applications of other spells.
One of the things has always bugged me is the comparison between Create Undead and Planar Binding (both 6th level spells). Planar Binding has no material component, a casting time of 10 minutes, and allows for any outsiders up to 12 hit dice. Create Undead has a material component cost of 50 GP per HD, a casting time of 1 hour, and allows you to select from a very limited list of options that are significantly weaker than bog standard bloody skeletons and fast zombies. When the spell first becomes available, all you can create are 2 HD ghouls. This makes it annoying to create NPC Necromancer antagonists. All the level-appropriate undead minions you might want the Necromancer to employ are all too powerful for him to create.
Doesn't that sort of make sense, though? I mean, wearing it is going to obstruct your joints a lot more. Like wearing a corset versus keeping one in a suitcase—which is more comfortable?
Doesn't that sort of make sense, though? I mean, wearing it is going to obstruct your joints a lot more. Like wearing a corset versus keeping one in a suitcase—which is more comfortable?
No.
A) the suitcase is bulkier and less wieldy than the corset andB) carrying full plate is very very awkward whereas wearing it is actually quite comfortable. You can do gymnastics in full plate nearly as easily as when unarmoured - there are plenty of videos showing this, plus many re-enactors on these forums.
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We aren't talking modern corsets. We're talking the kind that they wore back in the days when organ grinding meant something else entirely. ;)
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You can take a -4 on attack rolls with a chainsaw (Technology Guide) to do non-lethal damage with it."How does one inflict 'nonlethal' damage with a spiked morningstar?"
"I dunno... Groin shots?
I'm going to go out on a severed limb and say the running chainsaw is a more egregious example. At least a morningstar has a haft you could swat someone with.
For that matter, it also works with a monowhip:
Player: "I activate my monofilament whip and attempt to subdue him with non-lethal damage."
DM: "Wait, what?"
Player: "I take the minus 4 to hit. It is a melee weapon."
DM: "What are you doing? Trying to slice off only non-vital parts?"
Player: "Hey, I got a crit. And backed it even with the neg 4 on the confirmation. Thats a 3X mult."
DM: "His head appears to be unconscious as it is flipping through the air away from you."
Doesn't that sort of make sense, though? I mean, wearing it is going to obstruct your joints a lot more. Like wearing a corset versus keeping one in a suitcase—which is more comfortable?No.
A) the suitcase is bulkier and less wieldy than the corset and
B) carrying full plate is very very awkward whereas wearing it is actually quite comfortable. You can do gymnastics in full plate nearly as easily as when unarmoured - there are plenty of videos showing this, plus many re-enactors on these forums.
Have people taken videos of themselves carrying armor in their packs? I don't find carrying heavy things really keeps me from running if I need to.
Fly speed doesn't come with an altitude ceiling, or really any penalty for going up and up beyond the mountain environment high-altitude rules, which are based around long journeys through the mountains, not flying around.
We aren't talking modern corsets. We're talking the kind that they wore back in the days when organ grinding meant something else entirely. ;)
You mean that kind that gives ya tha VAYPAS! [/poor attempt at a southern bell accent][furious fan waving][/furious fan waving]
The only humanoid race to develop a nonverbal means of communication, is a Chaotic Evil race.
Well, that can make sense. They want a way to secretly communicate. A way for them to tell how they plan to betray you said literally under the table, and a way to tell the plan of how to brutally murder you when they are hiding around the corner.
Drow have a lot of things they don't want to have others hearing, and they do so on a fairly regular basis. So of course they would find the means to do so.
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Sign language doesn't work under the table unless you're both looking under the table constantly, which is going to arouse some suspicion. ;P
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Sign language doesn't work under the table unless you're both looking under the table constantly, which is going to arouse some suspicion. ;P
The other party won't notice if they are too busy looking under the table too. :O
Also, in a CE society of manipulators, you kinda just assume the other side is plotting anyway. It is all part of the game. You don't complain when the other team in football calls for a huddle, do you?
But yes, it is much, much more likely that it is for scouting and assassination. I'll admit that.
Side note: ...I kinda want to have them sometimes just sign a discussion about where they want to go for lunch tomorrow just to throw people off and make them think they are discussing something. That will particularly throw off any secret scriers watching their sign discussion (cause of course that would be a thing at least some of the time), and amke their enemies think that 'pastrami on rye' is some kind of code.
Counter intelligence about absolutely nothing is an important part of the intelligence game (since you are going to have them wasting their time checking out every single restaurant in town that serves pastrami sandwiches.
Actually, you can get lip reading as a "language," but since that piggybacks off of other languages, yes, Drow Sign Language is the only self-contained one that I know of.