All spells with attack rolls crit at x2 according to the rules as written. House rules vary, of course.
Unless you are a magus, but none of us are that class so no X3 crits or high crit ranges.
Heh, somehow I think that unlikely given I have 2 hp and they are, wisely, trying to finish me off. ;)
I did explicitly state my intent to use my familiar for combat manoeuvres and a familiar should absolutely be able to trip. He would have provoked an aoo for doing so, but had already provoked from the skeleton in question. I can show you any number of videos of goats knocking people over, or back, and Bez has an Int of 5 as smart as some PCs, and much smarter than the average goat. Its also very in character for Erald to have taught him to knock people on their butts.
The only thing preventing manoeuvres would be the ability to communicate the desire for them to the familiar; but if we are allowing Illyriana who as far as I can tell cannot speak, to give advice, not allowing a goat that is as intelligent as some PCs to have learned a few intuitive manoeuvres on command seems very strict. Spirit Binder is begging to get Speak with Master at first level IMO, but it does not appear to as written.
I am more than happy for you to reroll the aoos, but thought it was a pretty simple time saver, and that the order was fairly intuitive. They needed 17s or 16s to hit vs Bez and Erald respectively. Roll order can be a bit of a worry I realize because it is quite possible to reposition rolls to better suit, but generally I feel this is solved by keeping things in logical order.
Goats be Trippin'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbh-dFUUFes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa0CdYXsNZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ4C88kM9EY
Its partly a game balance issue. Even combat trained animal companions have to have the trip ability (like a wolf) to be able to trip. Its specifically called out in their abilities and taken into account in their CR rating.
A first level familiar should have relatively the same abilities as other familiars. It really should not have an effective melee attack that gives its master effectively two attacks a round. I believe that is well beyond the intended benefits of the creature.
That said I have seen a goat trip my brother when he was young. I would have to argue that this particular goat was well beyond first level though. :)
A goat familiar is small sized and gives +3 to survival, as opposed to +2 to a save, or +4 Init, it is far more vulnerable than most familiars, because it is always out. I have compensated for this by taking the awesome figment archetype, but that means Bez has only 2 HP and so will often get one shotted - he just comes back the next day. The rules absolutely allow for it, can an Int 5 PC not try to knock people over either?
I submitted my character with an explanation of how I anticipated using Bez and specific reference to combat manoeuvres, and it is within the rules. There are plenty of ways for a character to get two attacks at first level, rapid shot, weapon trick, two weapon fighting, half-orc trait and feat, claws, animal companion, eidolon, so Paizo don't seem to consider it a big issue.
A goat cannot possibly have tripped your brother, because it does not have improved trip or the trip ability, not even advanced goats ;)
I am not the DM so can only offer opinion. Were your goat an animal companion I might let you roll Handle Animal to push the goat to trip. That is a pretty hard charisma based check to do. Since its a familiar I'd say it would listen to your orders and at least strongly consider complying, assuming you can communicate with the animal.
A normal goat, or any other animal will flee from undead.
When my brother was tripped it basically was a surprise attack as the goat was initially acting friendly. Normally a goat would head butt, which might have proved quite useful here.
I'll butt out now. :)
Goats do piercing damage sadly, which I think is a bit silly and counter intuitive, but rules. Familiars are not animals they are magical beasts, and specifically fall under a different category than animal companions, which are counted as non sentient companions.
Nonsentient Companions: a nonsentient companion (one with animal-level intelligence) is loyal to you in the way a well-trained dog is—the creature is conditioned to obey your commands, but its behavior is limited by its intelligence and it can't make altruistic moral decisions—such as nobly sacrificing itself to save another. Animal companions, cavalier mounts, and purchased creatures (such as common horses and guard dogs) fall into this category. In general they're GM-controlled companions. You can direct them using the Handle Animal skill, but their specific behavior is up to the GM.
Sentient Companions: a sentient companion (a creature that can understand language and has an Intelligence score of at least 3) is considered your ally and obeys your suggestions and orders to the best of its ability. It won't necessarily blindly follow a suicidal order, but it has your interests at heart and does what it can to keep you alive. Paladin bonded mounts, familiars, and cohorts fall into this category, and are usually player-controlled companions.
Never played with a GM who does not make a mistake or two, my apologies for making things a bit confusing :)
Although I agree that the combat was fun, I think we need to rethink out tactics a bit. Pathfinder games are built around a mixed party of classes, and we are not that. Most parties have front-liners that hold off the enemy from the more vulnerable casters and ranged types. Og and I aren't a front line. We have big melee weapons, but we don't have the AC or the hp to equal a fighter.
The reason I am talking about this, is that I think we have to rethink our combat tactics. We can't act like a normal party, because we are not a normal party. We don't have a healer, which means that should things begin to go south, we have no way of "rallying the troops" with channeled healing. We also have a much shorter adventure day, as most of our abilities are limited to our memorized spells.
So what can we do? Well, I think we need to think our way through encounters and be much, much more careful. We almost lost our fire mage in that combat, and I was down to 2 hp as well. We need to come up with non-combat ways of dealing with obstacles, otherwise we will start to lose members very quickly.
What does everyone think?
I agree, though some things are just going to have to be fought through. I doubt we could have found a non combat way of dealing with the skeletons, short of having William try to animate them all... which might have still resulted in the same situation.
We are going to have to go slow but keep in mind that Med has only so much ammo. I can fabricate more bullets magically, but short of finding more powder (or a gunsmithing kit and wealth enough to make more) I am limited to 9 more shots with my gun before it becomes a paperweight. The fact they took cantrips from my archetype makes things interesting in this situation, as after that I will have 3 level one spells per day, and my pyro gnomish daily use spells (the conjure flame and flare being the most combat useful). After that I get out my dagger and hope you guys do enough damage to prevent my having to use it.
Oner thing that went wrong Medgar somehow was in the front. That should not happen. I had specified/recommended that Og take point but then I was not near a computer when we placed characters so Og was in the back. He would not have faired well with the damage either but with AC 16 and 12 hp he is more a front liner than most of you. That is how/why I built him. And he can fight defensively and be AC 18 or get up to 22 with a shield spell.
For what its worth I recommend at least scouting of some sort.
I also have my scrying sensor that I can use 6/day.
Nice. Lets do that for sure!
We really need to find some healing potions. Does anyone else have any healing? I know that I've used my memorized spell, and Og has his scroll.
Og has two scrolls of Infernal Healing. Since we could craft he spend most of his starting gold crafting scrolls. He also picked up one of the 2 healing potions. But I'd rather go out and camp than use up our few healing resources with the first encounter. As far as I know we are under no time constraint, except maybe running out of food at some point.
Man, send senses is amazing, I cant believe Ive overlooked that in the past.
Yeah, pretty useful to scout, although it only works in line-of-sight.
My understanding was that it was 2 healing potions per mule so we had 2 each, did I misunderstand?
Dang, thought that sounded a bit too good to be true!
Oh, I know. :) Just encouraging William to turn the creepiness on and off for party benefit. :P
Have to say that having the mental link feat is proving to be a load of fun....
Guys my grad class just finished, I have a week off before one more week of class. Posting speed should return to normal now for a good 8 days or so. ;)
Whee!
Hm... that is true, and I was assuming that it was auto confirm on twenty based on our other game that you are running. Do you want me to roll confirmation or just roll with it, pun not intended.
I am pretty sure we discussed doing the same here - I nat 20ed a couple of knowledge's and I think it was brought up then?
Agreed :)
Indeed so! Totally worth the 11 gold price of admission!
especially after there fighter type rolled a 2 on his attack. Very cool. :)
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I honestly don't remember what we ever decided about crits and fumbles for this game. In the other pbp I gm here (and rl games) we do nat 20 auto-crits without confirm...I should find where we talked about that last and put it in the campaign tab I guess.
... does that mean i should have auto crit-ed the skeleton earlier with my disrupt undead?......
Also remember that according to RAW, you can't crit something that doesn't have a defined physiology (e.g. oozes, elementals, and incorporeal creatures).
Yep, ghost touch enables crits in the case of incorporeal though.
"An incorporeal creature has no physical body. An incorporeal creature is immune to critical hits and precision-based damage (such as sneak attack damage) unless the attacks are made using a weapon with the ghost touch special weapon quality."
Ooh! I wasn't aware of that exception. Thanks for pointing it out!
The ability to enhance the gun without putting the +1 on first is very nifty I must say, and makes Spellslinger much better than I thought, though nowhere near over powered.
Yeah, and it will get more powerful as you level. Duration is level of the spell sacrificed, and it gets applied to spells I cast from it as well (so if I had cast burning hands instead of shooting it would have the affect of being a ghost touched burning hands... if that makes sense). All of this is balanced by my not having cantrips, thus making me dependent on ammunition and powder. Also is balanced by having 4 opposition schools... personally I think they went a bit overboard, but guns can be pretty powerful once you get to the more advanced ones (6 shot revolver comes to mind... no explosion chance, 6 chances to fire without having to reload, decent damage normally, and a huge multiplier for crits as we just saw).
Agreed on them going overboard, I would have said 2 banned schools, if that, giving up arcane bond and cantrips is already a big deal. That said you can compensate for a lot of the downsides as you level.