Rules clarifications are always welcome, dear Bognus. I'll never take offense, and I'm sure I'll make mistakes here and there!
I'm new to grappling as a focus for a character. With the last post you made, I could follow how you did everything (making sure your first target is pinned before allowing a second actual grapple through grab).
What I'm curious about now is, how do you proceed with two grapples?
My phone does not like roll20. I'm going to have to wait to post until I'm at a computer and can take a look at the map. GM, can you put the roll20 link in the 'about this game' section of the campaigns tab?
Also, ye gods, Bognus is a monster. Yikes.
Bluebeard isn't going to work though. It's soaked in blood, which isn't red.
I love how this party is full of characters who are trope subversions of their traditional party role.
Our Rogue? He's a full-casting cleric with the most hit points in the party.
Our Fighter? He's an undead grapple monk.
Our Wizard? She's a psychic necromancer.
Our Cleric? He's a stealthy guy with a whip.
Our Bard? She's a mind-controlling illusionist.
I love how this party is full of characters who are trope subversions of their traditional party role.
Our Rogue? He's a full-casting cleric with the most hit points in the party.
Our Fighter? He's an undead grapple monk.
Our Wizard? She's a psychic necromancer.
Our Cleric? He's a stealthy guy with a whip.
Our Bard? She's a mind-controlling illusionist.
I'm also very much enjoying this aspect of the characters. :)
I'll have the link up in a few minutes. I also might start subscribing to roll20 soon, in which case you will be able to access it via tablet and smartphone. I'm going to stick with it over googledocs I think. It's just too damn convenient. (as I lovingly look at the 20ft silence Aura on Karactus on the map).
You can thank yourself for the party composition. I believe these were the ones you suggested when I asked who you prefer to be paired with: no offense intended with the other group. I think they were all paired very well with the exception of Kessa. They're all pretty flamboyant and crazy (if not in style then in personality). I think Kessa would have gone well with this group, and if anyone ever drops out I will probably transfer her over.
How's that group going?
Rules clarifications are always welcome, dear Bognus. I'll never take offense, and I'm sure I'll make mistakes here and there!
I'm new to grappling as a focus for a character. With the last post you made, I could follow how you did everything (making sure your first target is pinned before allowing a second actual grapple through grab).
Point of order, so we all stay on the same page - I actually did that using Greater Grapple, which lets me maintain a grapple as a move action once I have ahold of someone. Then I used my standard action to grab the other guy.
What I'm curious about now is, how do you proceed with two grapples?
An excellent question: never done this before! Now that it comes up, I believe I have to continue to use both move and standard to grapple them both, using my feats Greater Grapple and Rapid Grappler to get three grapple attempts a round.
Grabbing Style is what's letting me do this without the usual penalty for not having a hand free, though. Grabbing Style's followup feat Grabbing Master allows me to grapple for damage on two targets at once, but I think until I a) have that feat and b) have two targets grappled already, I need to keep using multiple actions to hold two people. Once I fit those conditions, I should be able to use my actions on both of them at once, but that day is not this day.
Edit: Actually, something else has just occurred to me - one of those situations where the rules get a little confused by the 'reality' of the situation.
My Blood Drain ability says: "...if the vampire establishes or maintains a pin, it drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution damage..." So, as written, I think that every time I grapple to maintain a pin, I blood drain. Which lets me, theoretically, do this three times per round to some poor jerk. This seems a bit weird, though, and I suspect that it's intended to let me do this to a person once a round. I leave it up to your ruling.
Presuming that's the case, though, am I only allowed to do this to one creature a round? Given that I can pin two creatures a round, do I get to blood drain them both? Again, I think that the rules say I do get to - but is that too weird?
Edit edit: Just in case I forget to type it every time, be aware that if my Animal Fury bite hits, the following grapple attempt has a +2 bonus added on.
Edit edit edit: Also, check out what I'm about to do in game. Again, I'm pretty sure it's okay by the rules, and it. Is. Awesome. ...but, it's also a little weird.
(Body bludgeon is my favorite thing!)
I'll have the link up in a few minutes. I also might start subscribing to roll20 soon, in which case you will be able to access it via tablet and smartphone. I'm going to stick with it over googledocs I think. It's just too damn convenient. (as I lovingly look at the 20ft silence Aura on Karactus on the map).
I'm also a big fan of roll20. It's a little difficult to get used to, since the UI is very far from intuitive, but it's a great toolset.
I'm also very much enjoying this aspect of the characters. :)I love how this party is full of characters who are trope subversions of their traditional party role.
Our Rogue? He's a full-casting cleric with the most hit points in the party.
Our Fighter? He's an undead grapple monk.
Our Wizard? She's a psychic necromancer.
Our Cleric? He's a stealthy guy with a whip.
Our Bard? She's a mind-controlling illusionist.
Me three! I was just chatting with Karactus this morning about how our personalities are all gonna interact once we get a chance to sit around and chat/plan for a bit. I think it's gonna be super interesting. We've got a few long-range planners, one or two volatile personalities...should be fun.
That silence aura is really cool. It's also the same distance as my Beacon aura that grants everyone bonuses and fast heal.
Is it possible to have more than one of those on the same character? I'd love to have a ten foot aura as well denoting Aura of Cowardice and Aura of Despair.
It is. I've set up the second one
Thanks.
I don't think it will probably matter, but Karactus' Frightening Presence is a 60' spread centered on him. It isn't constant though. It's triggered by certain actions. If we're ever in a fight that involves those kinds of distances I might ask for yet another circle.
We've gone more than 24 hours without a post from Ulmah. Since this is during a combat, I will autopilot the character until Ulmah returns. Post coming soon.
Sorry, today was a crazy day. Always feel free to move forward and bot my character if I am behind!
I'm entirely too tired to type up all the dice necessary for it right now, but Bognus is going to drag his current target southeast with him, then grab ahold of the guard currently two spaces south of Sethirom. I'll get to the official post tonight, but there's my intent just so y'all can plan. I've also already moved myself in roll20.
Yeah, he's going where I take him.
Bognus needs Throw Anything so after he batters people to death with their friends he can hurl the corpses at other enemies.
Heck, if they were pinned, he might be able to use living enemies as ranged weapons. Then you could toss people into fires, traps, off cliffs...
Bognus needs Throw Anything so after he batters people to death with their friends he can hurl the corpses at other enemies.
Heck, if they were pinned, he might be able to use living enemies as ranged weapons. Then you could toss people into fires, traps, off cliffs...
Oh God. You guys just love making me scratch my head over rules here.
I suppose if we classified a living thing as an improvised weapon he'd still only have a 10 ft range with it, with the -2 penalty for each range increment increase. Also might have to put a total limit on distance, maybe 10ft for max load, 20 ft heavy, 30 ft medium 40ft light loads. Damage would be something like d6+str per 10ft thrown and the target thrown at would take d6+str per 10ft thrown +d6 per 10 ft thrown for every size category larger than the target.
So if Bognus were to manage to throw a Huge creature 40ft at a medium creature the huge would take 4d6+str and the medium would take 8d6+str.
Head scratcher
EDIT: If Bog threw a Col creature 40ft at a fine it'd take 36d6. As insanely improbably as this scenario is, and as hilarious as it would be, I think maybe I should change the extra damage to 2d6 per size category larger the creature is than it's target, regardless of distance. That'd make a 40ft throw from Colossal to Fine a 20d6+str chuck. Still decent!
You said this game was going Mythic at some point, right?
Because...
Limitless Range (Ex)
Multiply the range increment on all of your ranged and thrown weapons by 5 feet, and these weapons no longer have a maximum range increment for you. You can throw any melee weapon as if it had a range increment of 20 feet—this increment isn't multiplied by 5, but the weapon doesn't have a maximum range increment.
Bognus needs Throw Anything so after he batters people to death with their friends he can hurl the corpses at other enemies.
Heck, if they were pinned, he might be able to use living enemies as ranged weapons. Then you could toss people into fires, traps, off cliffs...
Oh God. You guys just love making me scratch my head over rules here.
I suppose if we classified a living thing as an improvised weapon he'd still only have a 10 ft range with it, with the -2 penalty for each range increment increase. Also might have to put a total limit on distance, maybe 10ft for max load, 20 ft heavy, 30 ft medium 40ft light loads. Damage would be something like d6+str per 10ft thrown and the target thrown at would take d6+str per 10ft thrown +d6 per 10 ft thrown for every size category larger than the target.
So if Bognus were to manage to throw a Huge creature 40ft at a medium creature the huge would take 4d6+str and the medium would take 8d6+str.
Head scratcher
EDIT: If Bog threw a Col creature 40ft at a fine it'd take 36d6. As insanely improbably as this scenario is, and as hilarious as it would be, I think maybe I should change the extra damage to 2d6 per size category larger the creature is than it's target, regardless of distance. That'd make a 40ft throw from Colossal to Fine a 20d6+str chuck. Still decent!
Heh. Just to add on to this, Body Bludgeon specifically causes me to treat them as improvised weapons. Technically, if I took Catch Off-Guard, I wouldn't even take penalties when using them in melee, and Throw Anything would let me throw them around. Also, from Improved Natural Attack, we know the following: "A weapon or attack that deals 1d10 points of damage increases as follows: 1d10, 2d8, 3d8, 4d8, 6d8, 8d8, 12d8." So, a Huge creature would clock in at a 3d8 damage dice, and a Colossal...uh...6d8. Hm...actually, now I think about it, Body Bludgeon doesn't seem to follow the usual damage increase tables: Tiny creatures are 1d6, Small creatures are 1d8, Medium 1d10 (I don't think they every thought about someone going larger than Medium creatures with this), so I guess it's kinda a GM call from there. Just for reference, though, don't scratch your heads too hard - I think this is a little too nuts, so I'll probably never do it. Well...with living creatures, anyway, I might do the throwing-their-corpses thing.
The trick is gonna be getting to do this to anything bigger than Large size in the first place. At the moment, the only reason I can even do this to Medium creatures is thanks to the Titanic enchantment on my bracers. I'm unaware of any way I can ever go larger than whatever my current size is - if anyone knows of something that lets you use abilities as if you were more than one size category larger than you are (since multiple enhancements of this type don't stack), let me know and we'll see about bludgeoning dragons with other dragons.
In the ongoing vein of "I never thought of this before" - can I Power Attack for my attacks in a grapple? I assume Constrict can't benefit from this, but Animal Fury and Body Bludgeon, even grappling for damage, I figure I ought to be able to take the hit to attack rolls and CMB, yeah? For some reason, I'd always missed the fact that you take a hit to CMB as well, so it seems to me I should, but...*shrug* heck if I know. I leave it in your capable hands.
Oh, and to reiterate a question from before: should I be Blood Draining multiple times a round, or no?
Well, there's always Enlarge Person. Potions are cheap.
Then there's Giant Form II. Lets you become a Huge giant.
That's about all I can think of that you qualify for.
I don't think they ever thought about someone going larger than Medium creatures with this
Body Bludgeon does actually cover creatures larger than medium.
"Medium creature deals 1d10 points of damage, and so on."The only flaw I'm seeing in your build is that even though you have the ability to grapple multiple creatures, Body Bludgeon still states that your victim is a two-handed weapon. Though, I'm ok with it.
Edit: Also, where is the constrict damage coming from? I'm seeing tetori don't get it until 15th level.
Edit2: I completely forgot to answer the blood drain question. I don't see anything that would prevent you from using blood drain multiple times a round.
Well, there's always Enlarge Person. Potions are cheap.
Then there's Giant Form II. Lets you become a Huge giant.
Already got Enlarge Person covered with the Titanic enchantment - lets me enlarge once a day. Admittedly, I should probably get ahold of some extra potions once I have some cash lying around.
Giant Form II, though: that'll work. If/when I can get somebody to throw it at me, anyway.
I don't think they ever thought about someone going larger than Medium creatures with thisBody Bludgeon does actually cover creatures larger than medium.
"Medium creature deals 1d10 points of damage, and so on."The only flaw I'm seeing in your build is that even though you have the ability to grapple multiple creatures, Body Bludgeon still states that your victim is a two-handed weapon. Though, I'm ok with it.
Edit: Also, where is the constrict damage coming from? I'm seeing tetori don't get it until 15th level.
Edit2: I completely forgot to answer the blood drain question. I don't see anything that would prevent you from using blood drain multiple times a round.
Damage dice: Yeah, but it doesn't use any of the standard dice progressions, so things get weird quick. That's all I meant.
2-handed Body Bludgeon: Whoop, I totally missed that! My bad. Thanks for letting me get away with it - I think maybe another -2 penalty to hit (as with oversized weapons) would be appropriate to balance it out?
Constrict: Constrict is coming from the Anaconda's Coils belt.
Blood Drain: Sweet. My victims will die that much faster.
Huh. Apparently, I never actually put any ranks into Appraise. That...does not fit with my dwarfy nature. This shall be remedied when we get to retrain a bit.
Worst dwarf ever
Dead, colorblind and can't tell gold from pyrite. >.<
Karactus can raise 10 Hit Dice of undead per casting of Animate Dead (20 in Desecrated areas). As long as each one is 3 HD or below he can do it for free.
Human skeletons are only ever 1 HD. With their templates they count as 3 HD.
So, right now, Ulmah has three 1 HD Bloody Burning Skeletons and two 1 HD Bloody Burning Skeleton Archers.
I had planned on adding these other folks to the horde, but I can do that later so there's less bookkeeping to keep track of.
I plan on leaving Branderscar burning and infested with undead though. All these guards are staying here to keep the fires burning and to greet the nice people who come to investigate this place later.
Perhaps i should Desecrate an area for you. Posting soon
That right there was me trying to give the decent advice Bognus is actually capable of (Profession: Soldier, whee), while realizing that he doesn't actually much care, himself.
Checking in. The game seems to have stalled a bit.
Still here!
Well s~&+.
I made a post last week but it didn't seem to go through. I had gone out of state to visit my mother for the holidays.
She lives out in the middle of nowhere in western NC and the reception on anything is enough to frustrate me.
Getting off work early today (in the next hour or so). Posts resuming soon :)
So, given that we're racking up the bodies I'd like to address the Undead Horde issue.
I know it's a lot of bookkeeping, and given that they are all 1 HD it isn't likely to change combat all that much, but I do want to raise them. The most efficient way for me to do it is to animate 12 at a time in a Desecrated area. Right now we have 5 Undead, and I think around 10 corpses.
They're all Bloody Burning Skeletons, so plan on leaving them behind to burn the place down.
If we agree to keep them mostly out of combat, is it ok to grow the horde?
You can make it as large as you like, I'm probably going to open a googledoc so that we can keep track of this and party loot online.
Great idea.
Skeletons are proficient with the armor and weapons they could use in life, so that means our horde is going to get complicated.
Right now here's what we have-
(Undead)
3 Bloody, Burning Skeletons (sword, shield, plate armor)
2 Bloody Burning Skeleton Archers
-----------------------
(Bodies, not undead yet)
6 human soldier corpses (sword, shield, armor)
3 human corpses (no equipment)
1 gnome corpse (no equipment)
----------------
Once we get two more bodies I'll do another animation.
Ulmah, please feel free to jump in. I know micromanaging the undead is supposed to be your job. I don't want to step on your toes. Im just trying to make things easier to keep track of.
I am totally happy with you micromanaging these weaker undeads... they're really just cannon fodder. I'm just itching to be able to start making MUCH more powerful ones when we get out of here and I write up a new spellbook. Or I find mine... that would be preferable. LOL
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As someone who's played a lot of Necromancers on these boards, here's some tricks I've learned to make things easier (I'm sure a lot of this stuff you already know, but I love necromancers, so I thought I'd start a conversation about it).
1) Make a separate alias for your horde. Put the stats for each kind of undead in a spoiler in the alias for easy reference. Make additional separate aliases for particularly complex or unique undead.
2) Make individual posts for each type of undead (for instance, right now you could make a post for soldier undead, and another for archers). This makes it easy for the GM to reply and react, and gives that cool "horde" feel.
3) Layer your general instructions to your undead to allow them to fight with small degrees of tactical intelligence. A few layers of "if/than" commands will allow your horde to do things like Flank and Aid Another, which can make even low hit dice undead effective at our level. Think like programming a robot.
4) Portable Holes are a necromancer's best friend. Being able to stow and deploy your horde quickly is crucial.
5) Learn the Necrocraft rules. That's how you turn a bunch of low hit dice undead into one big, effective one.
@DH: Wow, Necrocraft rules are awesome. I didn't even know such a thing existed. I will be using the CRAP out of those once we get some downtime. A big 'ol necrocraft that can cannibalize corpses to heal itself will be pretty amazing.
Yeah, they're the thing that keeps necromancers viable along side Summoners. The big drawback to necrocraft is that it is expensive. That's why you should always use a bloody skeleton as your base creature. Having an expensive minion destroyed is no fun at all.
In a game I was in a while ago I made a Bloody Frost Skeleton Ogre Spider and attached the torsos of a bunch of Ogre Bloody Skeletons to it's abdomen. Then I built a big platform on it's back. I gave the torsos tower shields and longspears. The platform had two Animated Seige Mortars manned by the torsos. Then I filled the spider's abdomen with 16 Kobold Bloody Skeleton Archers who had been Necrocrafted with the wings of Zombie Giant Bees.
My necromancer rode around commanding from his own undead aircraft carrier.
Hahahaha that is absolutely amazing! Now I have to come up with something as awesome as that! I hope not to disappoint.
We seem to have stalled on the player side. I was tempted to have a random patrol of guards stir things up, but it's really not my style.
I've also not heard from Seth for a few weeks in the gameplay thread. I've sent him a PM but without response, I will probably keep this as a group of four instead of replacing him.
Sorry, I've been pushing things forward and this weekend was busy for me. This is essentially a dungeon crawl, and I'm the rogue.
I'm back now. I'll get a post up.
We seem to have stalled on the player side. I was tempted to have a random patrol of guards stir things up, but it's really not my style.
I've also not heard from Seth for a few weeks in the gameplay thread. I've sent him a PM but without response, I will probably keep this as a group of four instead of replacing him.
Makes sense to me. Hope he hasn't gone away on us entirely, but it happens, and somehow I think this group can probably manage just fine with four. We seem to have the power curve well under control.
The power curve will be much more under control when I can start stitching together those bodies into a necrocraft. :-P
Checking in. Looks like we're paused again.
I'm here still as well.
Also here!
Glad we're still going. I was a bit worried.