GM_DBH's Shattered Star

Game Master DBH

No, I KNOW it was clear. That's not the issue at all. The issue is that *I* can't find where it WAS clear. But I know it's out there somewhere! For the life of me, I KNOW I saw it. But I can't find it. I just get irritated at tiny stupid stuff like that. I don't know why. Small-time stuff irritates me WAY more than major critical stuff. I'm weird like that. :P

Nothing at all to do with you, bud. :)

So, um, is this what your looking for?

THAT'S IT! I KNEW it was somewhere, for crying out loud! Jeez. I bet you I looked past that thing a million times. Man, that wears me out when I can't find stuff that I KNOW I saw somewhere.

Thanks, Elathras! Sheesh. Probably time I get new glasses. It's been a couple of years. They're just so dang expensive though. Even WITH insurance. :P

@Elathras yes, see the previous post. Elena casts communal resist fire before calling, assuming everyone gives the go ahead amd is ready with prep.

I'm not sure how Guarded Stance works for the others. Do they have to spend a move action to get it to work?

If it does work that way, it only last 2 rounds but at least you can activate it again if you want.

Looking on nethys, Rage Song specifies that abilities that require standard actions to use can't be shared. The actual stance rage powers all use move actions to activate , presumably during rage. Nothing else is mentioned on them in raging song. So... it seems that to enter a stance rage, we would have to spend a sepwrate move action.

If you want to achieve a similar effect to guarded stance, perhaps the beast totem line is better? The level 6 totem gants everyone a natrual armor bonus equal to 1 +1 per 4 skald levels, and doesnt cost an action for others to use. And the level 10 one grants the melee characters pounce.

Okay. Will go with that instead. Having to figure out what rage powers go well for the team is a beating. For me anyway. I've no idea what's good and what's not.

Beast totem it is then. Sounds good. That way, you all don't have to jack with move actions and all that.

Crap! I've got Celestial totem already. It won't let me select Beast totem. This is starting to piss me off more and more. Ugh.

Now that I look at it, THAT'S a stupid choice. I got nothing. I don't freaking know anymore.

You could always ask for a retrain or pay that cost. I believe it's like... 180 g to retrain one class feature at level 6, which is doable.

Just go lesser beast totem + beast totem + greater beast totem later. There are other good rage powers like superstitious and sudden strike I think, but nothing quite as strong as a huge passive ac bonus to everyone + giving all melee characters pounce in the late game.

Actually... i just realised that lesser beast totem, normally not that great as people tend to use weapons instead of claws, is *extremely* good for elena's summons. It essentially gives them two extra attacks each round. :O

You could always ask for a retrain or pay that cost. I believe it's like... 180 g to retrain one class feature at level 6, which is doable.

How do I go about doing that? I don't know how retraining works or what's involved in all that.

Just go lesser beast totem + beast totem + greater beast totem later. There are other good rage powers like superstitious and sudden strike I think, but nothing quite as strong as a huge passive ac bonus to everyone + giving all melee characters pounce in the late game.

Actually... i just realised that lesser beast totem, normally not that great as people tend to use weapons instead of claws, is *extremely* good for elena's summons. It essentially gives them two extra attacks each round. :O

How does it work for your summons? I truly don't get it so that's why I ask. I mean, if it does then that's cool with me! I'm just curious as to how.

Google Pathfinder retraining rules for the full explanation. The general formula 10 gp x character level x days needed to retrain x , where x is what you want to retrain. A class feature takes 3 days i believe so tbe cost would be 10 x 6 x 3. Since you havent used this fearure before perhaps DBH is kind enoigh to wave the time.requirement?

For summons, they are usually animals that use natural weapons. When you full attack, you attack with each natural weapon you have. Most commonly animals tend to have bite attacks only. If they have no claws, lesser animal totem lets them grow two claws. When they full attack, they can then attack with both their normal natural weapon (the bite) and the claws they now have. A wolf for instance could then bite + claw twice, a python snake could constrict + claw twice. None of my summons as yet normally have accesss to claws, so that's a lot of synergy between rage song and them.

Oh so what you're saying is, that THEY get the rage benefit too. That's pretty cool. I didn't know that. Interesting.

I'm fairly sure that they do, as they are allies, and it affects all allies. The ones from Herald caller are also intelligent enough to understand and perform direct and specific commands.

There have been discussions in the past on if an animal is too dumb to understand a song and receive a benefit from it. By RAW nothing stops them from getting the performance bonus. Some have argued though that without a rank in linguistics and an int of at least 3 an animal cannot understand common and thus wouldn't be able to understand a song or gain any benefit from it. This leads into a can of worms where perform in general is not always a song like through inspire courage, so why would that work through I.E. dance but not as a song, as well as whether you have to really understand a song for it to invoke magical rage in you. Among other things.

AFAIK there has never been an official ruling stating they cannot, and the argumentation for not feels flimsy to me.

Sorry. No time to update tonight.

I CANNOT believe that hydra died in 1 round. It's unbelievable. Truly. I'm still stunned and still can't believe it.

Fire ray crits and good melee damage :)

That said these statues are somewhat terrifying. As written, their special ability is that if a weapon hits them, it takes 3d6 damage and if it takes *any* damage over hardness, it instantly breaks. So... a hardness 10 weapon has a 40% or so chance to break on each hit? That is rough. And that is only a weapon made fully of metal. Most hafted weapons have hsrdness 5 thus a 75% chance to break on each hit. Did they mess up writing this and that it should have been excess damage over the weapons hit ooints rsther than hardness?

Thanks for pointing that out Elena. I had missed that little bit of joy. :)

No problem. Haha! Ha... *winces as Bharak's weapon just broke from taking damage over its hardness*. Normally it wouldn't but these statues have it worded that way. :(

@DBH Elena has sacred summons and she can summon a neutral good, celestial snake as a standard action which should be able to act right away. Unless it's a punishment of sorts for me in which case I guess that's fair for this instance.

Broken unless the gm is really, really kind that is.

Sorry, Monday has ambushed me again. No time to update tonight.

Got home completely washed out. No update tonight.

I Hate hot and humid days!

Thanks for the update, and understandable

Dbh, did we need to use the second water breathing scroll to fight the momsters at the shipwreck fir the half orc, as in was it submerged entirely, or do we still have it? Actiallu Elena probably prepped it herself when she heard they had to go near water. Can i assume we have the scroll?

@Elena. Yes you still have it.

I'm behind on important things so no update tonight.

No update due to lack of time.

"You don't think those two sand hills topped with shields are supposed to symbolize a pair of breasts? I mean, this was the Runelord of lust's place of power and the Thassilonean lust symbols are right there, too. What else is it supposed to be?"

You're treading a slippery slope, Elena. That was almost a Naked Gun reference.

Well, to be fair, it actually was. ;)

Wonder if that makes me old, a pervert, or a combination of both. In my defense, this is *the* naughty place among naughty places as far as Golarion's dungeons are concerned, so what else was I supposed to think!?

I think it's perfectly fitting. lol!

Happy thanksgiving! Falling abit behind due to traveling and whatnot. Catching up now

I have to go out tonight so no update I'm afraid.

have a good night out :)

No update. Too busy at the moment.

It's that time of year again. No update.

As a heads up, I will be on vacation from Sat -> Sat.

Thanks for the warning.

DBH, you botted Bharak, but he had posted just four minutes earlier with a successful disable device.

Bharak cutting it close

Did he? That hadn't shown up when I posted sorry.

Christmas has hit me again. By which I mean Work parties and people realizing they haven't spoken to you for nearly a year and hurriedly trying to make amends. No update sorry.

If he is both invisible and displaced, there seems to be no downside to coating the entire area in thick fog so we have basic to full concealment too. None of our sheets have an anti-invisibility spell we could target at it. And while the fog lasts (1 minute), we are also immune to sneak attack if it has that.

Good call. I think it's weird how this is turning into a (de)buff tag, with no actual damage yet attempted. I wonder what would happen if we just waited for all of his buffs to expire. He can't come through the closed gate without us noticing him. Unless there's another way around.

And I can sympathize with Elathras that the guy could be merely defending his "home," which is one of the reasons I'd hope he'd attack first.

Yeah, i hear you. From DBH's last post it seems the Dhampir just opened the gate himself before Bharak got to finish, so we seem to be in imminemt danger with him presumably coming for us.

Regarding the second point, I can understand where the trepidition is coming from. Otoh, this is supposedly a servant of a very evil runelord. Even if his language indicates he has no choice but to stop us, making him more neutral perhaps, he still more or less directly stated he was going to stop us, presumably by attacking, so...

And I can sympathize with Elathras that the guy could be merely defending his "home," which is one of the reasons I'd hope he'd attack first.

It seemed like a point of view that would be appropriate for a LG person who would prefer to fight 'monsters.' But I put it in a 'thought bubble' because being uncomfortable is not the same as being unwilling. I don't want him to lecture anyone, he wouldn't have made it as a hell knight if he was a lecturer, but I do want to be aware of why he does what he does.

Getting up at 4am to catch a flight. Please bot me if needed, but I'll post when I can.

No update tonight.

No update sorry. I've been busily running around the last few days and my knee has decided to punish me for it.

For future reference:

The main issue with us not staying together is that Elena's powerful, spellslot-less heal is a full round action. Thus, if you are not within 10 ft of her, then to heal you, she either has to channel for a little (25%? of what it could be) which also heals enemies, or move to you and then give up spellslots to heal for roughly half the amount the slotless heal can do.

I don't know how hard this guy hits, I don't know if he is tactically sound enough to walk past us all on the ceiling to attack an isolated spellcaster in the back, and thus I'm not saying spreading out is wrong per se, but if you want access to strong healing you generally have to be near Elena.

Okay, that's good to know. Currently, we're all within 10 feet of you.

(Although my suspicion is that this guy isn't as scary as the AP wants us to think he is. My feeling is that we've over-prepared for him.)

We might as well take a break here. Christmas is a busy time, so the next update will be on the 27th.

Roger that, I just came back and everything is backed up. Look forward to seeing you all when we get back to it.

Merry Holidays, all!

All right, happy holidays everyone! See you when we get back. Apologies is the previous post came across as cross or such, that was not the intent.