Please, move yourself in the map.
You have permission :D
Done, Mysty is itty-bitty enough that I can step over.
There's no issue passing through an ally square.
I'm trying to keep in rough initiative order, so I'm waiting to see what Nahia decides to do.
Do the guards seem to think I'm one of them?
I posted my surprise round action, and was waiting to hear what yours was, Rose.
That being said, my action isn't too likely to change. I'll go ahead and post it.
I'm still wanting to know if they think I'm one of them. That will change my options quite a bit.
I could always rap you with my hammer to help with the deception.;)
Update on my Absence: Sorry everyone, moved cities, and found out that I can no longer do Paizo stuff from work. So I literally 30 seconds ago finally turned on my computer for the first time since the move. I'll likely still be a couple of days before I can catch up effectively :(. If you can wait I would still love to be part of this game as it is far and away the one I am most invested in and in love with.
@Rose
I'm guessing from your words that you'll deley to see what the guards will do first, right?
@Seren
The Evil DM will cut you loose!
MWUAHA HAHA HAHA
Okay, take your time. :)
Emergency rations.
No, not at all. I should be able to tell with a sense motive check whether or not they think of me as a threat.
I am not waiting or delaying. I just need to know what they are doing.
Okay! Sorry for the confusion then! I thought I had already answered your questions here:
The guards that once were focusing in Rose and the skeleton, now are entirely paying attention only to the giant Watchtower guard and his strange comments, also for the other guard spitting lies about their leaders.
The Giant Watchtower guard being Hound, and the one spitting lies being Nahia.
Meaning: They are not paying attention to you.
Got it! Sorry for the confusion.
I'll get a post in tomorrow morning, but I don't think it will be anything spectacular. My plan is to continue the ruse, "retreat" through their lines and end up behind them playing the part of a wounded ally.
Feel free to move things forward if you see this before I have time to get an in game post in.
Nay, don't worry. Take your time.
Yeah, they are!
Think about it, they are just normal soldiers, their strength lies in their organization, but well, you killed already all of their captains, and now, they are facing the skeletons of their beloved Father and Iron Sam. No moral to speak of, no soldier will rally them, maybe the lord, but that’s yet to be seem.
Up now you are big bad nightmare stuff for them. Someone capable of killing their leaders. Raising them as skeletons and that freaking huge pole wielding enemy. You can even smell the poop! If they could, they would be saying: Bring me my brown pants!
Ok, so does the Lord think I'm one of them? Sense motive please?
He just arrived. He know that Hound is not one of them, and those fighting besides alongside the big one are probably not watchtower’s allies.
Edit:
What I'm trying to say is: He did not had time to determine who is an enemy and who is an ally. The first thing he did was to raise the moral.
From the lord's view point there are those, dressed as soldiers attacking other soldiers, and those dressed as soldiers fleeing.
And since there's not many soldiers at balentyne, and they do have some more than weekly meetings, there's always the possibility the Lord will know that you are not a Balentyne soldier. And don't forget you are dressed as lieutenant from Captain Eddarly's command.
@Rose
In occasions like that you should make a decision: Act as one of then, and bluff, or don't act as one of then and don't bluff.
It seems you are trying to know the result of your bluff before doing the action, to see if you'll succeed or not in your attempt.
Fine. I'll just go for it. He who dares, wins. Or gets killed by the boss for trying.
I thought dismissing a spell was a free action in most cases? Is that not the case? I'm not changing my appearance with the hat. I'm going back to my regular appearance.
Dismissing a spell is a standard action.
@Action in combat.
Using a magic item, usually takes an standard action. In this case you are not dismissing the spell(even though it would be a standard), you are change your appearance back to it's original.
Don't really need to fuss over this, because it don't add anything to Rose, except coolness :D
Anyway, I'll update in some hours. I just remembered I have an Airspace control software to finish, and I'm yet to start it. :(
Wow, that is hideously stupid game design. Why would an action with no tangible effect take that much effort? That is a rule that I will be continuing to ignore in my home games. I'll keep it in mind for this game in the future, though I will grumble about it to myself.
Because, it was no tangible effect on this case.
You are not looking at the bigger picture, you are just thinking on your character viewpoint.
Actually, I'm considering the very big picture. Not the 'how does this for within the broader scope of the mechanics' picture but the 'what function do the rules themselves serve as narrative tools' picture.
I'm thinking "if I were running a game, and a character wanted to release a spell effect, would I want to bother with considering the effort involved in dismissing the energy, or would I want to say 'ok' and get on with the story."
I'm going through a mental list of spells and trying to figure out which ones would somehow be made more powerful by the ability to dismiss them without effort. The only ones I can think of are Wall effects. The rest it doesn't seem to make a difference.
My friends and I use the term "funpire" to describe things that make life less fun. (The DMV is pretty much the top of the list) Somehow it got into our gaming lexicon and gets brought up when we run into things that make gaming itself less enjoyable.
This is a rule that makes me question the actual competence of the person that wrote it. It's going on my list of Facepalm-worthy game design, right up there with the 3.5 grapple rules, polearms using the ranged cover system, how the 5' step mechanics work for large creatures, the Sacred Geometry feat, and every other rule that not only misses the mark of what it is trying to emulate, but also serves to actually limit or hinder storytelling (I.e. "Fun").
I'm glad that you see it as a non-issue that deserves to be hand waved as descriptive fluff. That's how I think it should be handled. Heck, I've been playing Pathfinder since the Beta test and no one I've ever been in a game with has ever brought this up. It seems like a rule that doesn't need to be a rule. Who the hell was running a game and decided that this would make their game better? It baffles me..
Ok, rant over. Back to the fun.
I've never sat down to consider the tactical ramifications of the thing because ti is very rare for someone to want to dismiss a spell in the first place, especially during combat, at least in any of my games.
The wall effects certainly make sense. There are also a lot of the old "spell tricks" like filling a rope trick with alchemist fire (or a raging barbarian) and then dismissing it to drop it on an opponent, or using web and some wood or blankets to make a makeshift bridge. Dismissing a hostile levitation or fly to drop someone (or to drop something on someone).
It seems, off the top of my head, that you could possibly get an attack out of some spells that were not attack spells, and they probably wanted that to take an action instead of being free.
I just wanted to add that I'm pretty sure that rules has been in there since 3.0. Also, this kind of thing is exactly why rule 0 exists.
All of those spell tricks sound like fantastic story segments to me. They are all things that the rules allow. I just can't figure out why they would require the caster to take an action to trigger them. They are all essentially traps. What's the point of setting up a trap that can't be easily triggered at the right time?
This happened in a game I was in once, and is a great example of funpire rules-
We rigged up a trap that was going to drop a big stone column down onto a wooden walkway. We could have simply destroyed the walkway but we decided to use it to take out the ogre patrol that was on its way.
There was nowhere to hide so we decided to use ourselves as bait. An illusion was cast to hide the rope the fighter was holding. Along come the ogres.
The GM ruled that initiative rounds began when the two groups saw each other, and that the fighter couldn't let go of the rope unless it was his action.
So one of the ogres was able to charge right across the bridge before the fighter could let go. The fighter, instead of being able to engage the now in-our-face ogre, was told that if he wanted to drop the bridge while an ogre was on it he'd have to Ready an action. So he did. The next ogre went across. The fighter dropped the bridge. The GM made a save for the ogre, decided that it was good enough for the ogre not to be caught, and put the ogre on the other side, again, right in our faces.
The third ogre ran for reinforcements.
Two sessions later a trapdoor in a dungeon went off underneath the party. We tried to argue based on the ogre incident. Guess how well that went for us?
Yes, it's an example of bad GMing. It's also an example of bad rules.
The notion that it takes a players action to do something that aught to be reflexive or otherwise take no real effort is terrible.
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The point may be moot anyway. The hat of disguise places an illusion on you that lasts until interacted with, which is never explained in detail. Attacking, spellcasting to attack or using a attacking ability could be considered interactions. The pally and friends may get a save vs it at this point anyway, as you have spoken in a womans voice (I could be wrong but all officers have been guys to this point) and you unleashed a very visible power. It would be fair to say few guards can channel energy like that. It still uses the rules for illusions after all.
Still from a story perspective, I have always thought in any games I have run that good story, provided it doesn't unbalance, is worth a little fudging the rules. Still, gm prerogative applies.
Technically speaking I'm still Alter Self'd into the shape of a stocky man. I'm not really sure what my voice sounds like right now.
I'm working on a haunted house that opens this friday. My posting schedule will be extremely unpredictable and limited this week.
Deleted the beginning of my post because I had an idea, but wanted to run the rules by you to be sure it would work.
We've discussed how I can't hold something in the same hand I'm using to carry a heavy shield, but what about tucking my hammer under my left arm in order to free up my main hand to draw and use another item?
Would that work? Free action, switch weapon to "tucked under arm." Move action, draw a ranged weapon. Standard action, use ranged weapon. Free action retrieve melee weapon.
Thoughts?
Oooh! Haunted house! Never went to one! :D
Have fun Rose, and don't worry.
Deleted the beginning of my post because I had an idea, but wanted to run the rules by you to be sure it would work.
We've discussed how I can't hold something in the same hand I'm using to carry a heavy shield, but what about tucking my hammer under my left arm in order to free up my main hand to draw and use another item?
Would that work? Free action, switch weapon to "tucked under arm." Move action, draw a ranged weapon. Standard action, use ranged weapon. Free action retrieve melee weapon.
Thoughts?
Let me post the Lord action, and you decide what you want to do, okay? :D
I thought he cast a spell on his action?
Oh, I see now! That was you NPCing Seren. I thought the Lord cast on his round (which seemed odd, now that I think about it.)
hey I should be back now, at least able to post at the at a decent rate.
Seren, I got clear. You can move the priest in to take some swings.
Next round, if the skeletons are both still up, we can play a little musical chairs. I'll make a post delaying for you (snarling some sort of quick tactical order), then you can attack, step back, have a skeleton move into your position. Then I can move back in to attack.
Or something like that.
@Mysty
Here you describe as if poisoning your weapons again, however you don't say what poison you used.
In the next opportunity, please describe explicitly what are you using. :)
And remember that, drinking an Antitoxin, gives you +5 bonus on your test, it does not exclude you from 5% of change to poison yourself while dealing with poison.
@Seren
Welcome back.
Happy new house? :)
@Rose
Tucking something under the arm question:
Well, I’m not against that, however, it makes you using that arm a lot harder. We can agree as the follow: If you tuck anything under one particular arm, everything you might do using that same arm, will have a -2 pen. What do you say?
And it’s a free action to do so.
@Everyone
Also, for everyone:
Free actions:
Let’s talk about free actions. Free actions are, as you know, free.
I’ll however set a limit to it. You can do two free actions in your turn, if you don’t do any swift or immediate action.
Meaning: You have a pool of ‘two actions’ that can be used for: Swift, Immediate and Free actions (Excluding here 5ft step, and free actions you do in conjunction with others, such as move and drawing your weapon with your move).
The limitations about Swift and Immediate still stands (Just one per round).
What means is: If you use too many ‘free actions’ you will not be able to use swifts and immediate actions.
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You are correct, but the roll for poisoning yourself is the actual attack. At least that is the way I have always seen it played. But I could be wrong, of course. Probably am knowing my luck. :(
Whenever you attack with a poisoned weapon, if the attack roll results in a natural 1, you expose yourself to the poison. This poison is consumed when the weapon strikes a creature or is touched by the wielder.If I roll a one I get hit by the poison.
From reading further I suppose it could also apply to initial applying the poison. Seems a bit of overkill but I guess so. I will do it like that in future. Sorry for my confusion.
BTW the poison is blue Whinnis which is detailed here
There is one roll for poisoning yourself and one circumstance where it happens automatically. You roll (versus 5%) when applying the poison and if you roll a 1 on an attack roll you also poison yourself.
House is good. Though puppy slowed everything down quite a bit. Plus had to figure out how to manage not having paizo access at work anymore plus wayfinder refuses to let me use seren to post so thats fun...
-Posted with Wayfinder
Whew. That was a hell of a fight. Ice Golem Alarm, barricade, Captain Sam and Father Don, more soldiers, and then the Lord himself, all in one long chain with very little time to recoup between sets.
GM, congratulations on running such a long fight and making it constantly edge-of-the-seat intense rather than feeling like a slog. I know I am usually the first one to balk at GM decisions that seem restrictive, but I understand that those calls are designed to make it easier for you to control the narrative tension. You outdid yourself with this one. Definitely my favorite section of the game so far.
I agree, it has been particularly intense.
Congrats Aku on a set of tough combats well handled.
Thanks.
It's appreciated.
To continue, I need to know where will you be moving next.
Look at the dwarven map, and tell me where you want to go.