[PFS1e] GM Deussu's #6-05 Slave Ships of Absalom CORE (Inactive)

Game Master Deussu

Every day is leg day. Imagine the calves of those lighthouse keepers.

levitate, fly, dimension door, teleport

There's also the "I'll just stay up here in a cot, and go down every week or so for supplies"

Or you can train seagulls to go fetch supplies for you.

I think that this is modern day complaining about a few steps. People were pushed to build massive megaliths like the pyramids and stone henge that actually defy our modern day expectation about what is physically possible. Anyone here I imagine could climb those steps with a couple of breaks.

If there's any ambiguity about my last post: I never wanted to suggest that Ny'a couldn't do what she was tasked with because she is a paladin.

My only intent with role-playing Erica as a bit surprised was to contribute to interactions and conversation between PCs :)

@GM Deussu - My character is not planning on being around to be speared again next round. Would it be possible to take a 5' step off the ship and then fall into the row boat after my character takes his standard action next turn? I think that would be legal and not provoke any attacks of opportunity from the gnolls with their spears.

Hmm, as a full withdraw action that would be possible. Falling on the rowboat would mean taking falling damage unless you roll sufficiently high on your Acrobatics check.

Someone should try to heal Will before he bleeds out. That was a nasty shot. :)

Erica has no healing items and is Untrained in the healing skill, unfortunately :(

Ny'a can help, but the path there is congested. If it gets clear, she'll be on her way!

On my way with a cure light wounds on the next round.
Sorry for blocking you Erica, but it was either attack the orc, or take an AoO running for Will

Oh don't worry Umdar, the situation was complicated and I was hesitating myself between stay in one place and attack the half-orc, or run to Will's aid and take an AoO

Guess you solved my dilemma!

You can move through an ally's space with no penalty, fyi.

You can move through an ally's space with no penalty, fyi.

Wasn't aware of that subrule... In that case, I'll probably run help Florin next round if Erica's not too wounded (and take an AoO in the face, too bad), and switch places with Ny'a! Unless she wants to help Will herself :)

Thanks Zin'Zarin!

"We have none isn't it" reflects the exact moment where you realize you've been playing the game on nightmare mode

It's the part I go "where's the cleric?" And then look at myself.

I play a druid in another campaign.

I feel you, buddy. We need to unionize.

So Will was at 41. Being healed 8 points leaves it at 31. You should be alright now, mate

I currently have a cold (first it was a sore throat, now my nose is gooey) and so does my younger daughter. Updating will be slow.

To correct my previous statement, 33 dmg, leaving Will at 1 hitpoint

@Deussu I've had my share of getting ill from my daughter, get better soon!

@Umdar - Actually he took 1 hit point of bleed damage so he should be at 0 hit points after your spell.

Bleed should end upon receiving that Cure Light wounds no?
Or is it one that specifically needs a heal check.

Didn't notice the bleed. Will need to rub a wand of clw on him then

FYI, I'm leaving this afternoon for a camping trip that extends into the Labor Day holiday. I won't be returning home until late Monday evening; I likely won't be able to post again until Tuesday morning.

Enjoy your holiday trip!
Shall we bot you while you're away?

Any cure spell will auto stabilise a dying character. He lost the 1 hp before the cure spell was delivered so he is now stable at 0 hit points.

If Will is stabilized, perhaps it would be best to zap Florin with the wand next? :) and maybe Erica will soon need it as well omg

Druids cannot convert their spells into cures like Clerics instead they convert them into Summon Natural Ally. Likewise an Eagle cannot use a wand as it cannot speak the necessary command word. Natural Spell is a great feat but it does not cover spells cast from wands and such.

Assuming that Umdar is going with his listed spells in his profile we might have a problem with his last action. :)

So hopefully we bring our foes down quickly before they bring us down........

I had CLW prepared, I removed it once used, perhaps I need to mark them as "spent" instead.

What I do is simply cross them out once cast with my prepared casters but I guess there are many different way to record it. This way you have a record of what is cast and it makes the slot easy to recover with Pearls of Power and the like. :)

Cure Light Wounds

strikethrough looks much better, will do that, thanks!

Of course now I notice the gnolls have spears, not longspears. They shouldn't have reach. Not that it would matter a whole lot.

Guess I imagined having a longer spear would be better on a ship.

Curing 30 hitpoints with a wand of clw will take on average 6 turns :D
Everyone should start smacking themselves silly with their wands

Only two in the party can use those wands though.

And we're going to need to rally to pursue the evidence here real soon too.

My character's UMD is pretty good. Sylvester can help you with your wand usage most of the time. :)

I guess Ny'a can channel if we are in a real hurry.

Well in our current state, we're likely to not save the evidence.

Unless we're going to grind through whatever is behind the door as we are now.

a wand of CLW is 1d8+1, so Will actually heals 3d8+3

@Ny'a - You will need a DC 10 Ride check to attack with your mount while you are riding him or both of you will not be able to attack. Your Armor Check Penalty of -5 will apply to all of your ride checks including riding with no hands. Generally you will be using the Ride skill and not Handle Animal to control your mount while riding. The Ride Skill section of the CRB is really worth reading through as is the section of mounted combat in Chapter 8. :)

Also a wolf is not a valid option for a small sized character. You are limited to boar,dog or pony. Of course he could have the game statistics of a dog (as detailed in the CRB under the druid section) and look like a wolf.

@Ny'a - You will need a DC 10 Ride check to attack with your mount while you are riding him or both of you will not be able to attack. Your Armor Check Penalty of -5 will apply to all of your ride checks including riding with no hands. Generally you will be using the Ride skill and not Handle Animal to control your mount while riding. The Ride Skill section of the CRB is really worth reading through as is the section of mounted combat in Chapter 8. :)

Also a wolf is not a valid option for a small sized character. You are limited to boar,dog or pony. Of course he could have the game statistics of a dog (as detailed in the CRB under the druid section) and look like a wolf.

@GM, how do I fix this?

Can I rebuild the mount into a dog in the middle of this scenario?

Oof, alright. Let's look at this. Sylvester is right about the use of Ride skill. With Handle animal you can make your mount attack alone, but Ride is needed if you want to attack yourself.

This mount is usually a heavy horse (for a Medium paladin) or a pony (for a Small paladin), although more exotic mounts, such as a boar, camel, or dog are also suitable.

Emphasis mine. It appear to say 'such', which to me makes this very varying. I actually found a very old post from the erstwhile campaign coordinator, Joshua J. Frost, [u]who said[/u]...

The class description says the mount is "usually" a heavy horse or pony. But then it goes on to say that the mount functions as a druid animal companion using the Paladin's level as the effective druid level. This immediately gives you access to a companion from that list.

For the sake of riding, however, I'd say that to be a "suitable mount for riding" (as loosely defined in the Ride skill) the mount generally has to be a quadruped one size category or more larger than your character. It would be pretty silly if your medium-sized human paladin rode a medium-sized boar, for example. :-)

While Frost's reasoning about being able to pick anything from the druid's list isn't wholly convincing, all this would lead me to believe a paladin can choose any animal from the druid's animal choice list as long as it is suitable as a mount, so mostly quadruped animals. In this regard, I find nothing wrong with a wolf mount for a small-sized character. If, however, Ny'a was riding a constrictor snake, I would inspect once more. ;)

If you've found something more recent that overturns this ruling, please let me know.

Here I must fall back to the FAQ (Organised Play) which explicitly states that you have to pick from the list provided.

A dog is a solid mount so no need to fret. There are dogs breeds that look like a wolf so your character might not even know that her wolf is actually a dog. :)

Your mount must be at least one size category larger than you. If you're a Medium PC, your mount must be Large. If you're a Small PC, your mount must be at least Medium. You may only select a mount from the listed mounts on page 63 of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook unless another source grants access to additional creature choices. As a cavalier, you may select a mount from those listed on page 33 of the Advanced Player's Guide. No additional mounts are available in the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild except when granted from another legal source.

I hid a link in "FAQ wrote".

You're correct. Oddly google (or Paizo, for that matter) didn't provide a link to the FAQ, so I was left to search through all the forum posts. This updated ruling is from March 2017.

Annoyingly it states the page number, which just leads to the default Divine Bond options.

BUT this raises another issue. A simple dog is a small animal, thus unsuitable as a mount, at least according to the FAQ. While listed, it's still not applicable. A riding dog, however, is medium, but not listed, since for some arbitrary reason it's not the same thing as a dog. Sure, at 4th level a dog advances and becomes medium, so for Ny'a it shouldn't be a problem anymore. Still, super dumb.

At times I wonder why on earth the paladin's mounts aren't identical to one another at start, with the option of adding pieces on it to more resemble whatever abomination one rides with.

With a quick glance Ny'a's wolf would transform into a dog (very wolf-like in appearance, if you like), gains +2 STR, gains low-light vision (wolves can't see in the dark WTF?!), speed decreased to 40 ft., and its attack doesn't trip. These changes can easily be made midfight. And I have absolutely no problem you having it look, sound, and feel like a wolf, so long it abides the rules of the game.

Where does the wolf get +1 to all physical stats, though? I never play companion classes, so this is just genuine curiosity.

Having a choice of mount is a good thing. It adds some variety to the game IMO.

The mount is treated like an Animal Companion of the Paladin's level with the exception that it starts with an Intelligence of 6. So you take the base statistics of the animal and then add the level advancement for increasing its size to medium and then add what ever it says on the chart for a 5th level Druid. The ability increase is a floating +1 bonus to any of its ability scores.

So yeah, the post from Joshua Frost is what I found when I researched her mount on leveling her to 5, so that's the basis I used for choosing a wolf. Paizo should really flag old posts like this that are directly contradicted by a later FAQ entry, to remove the chance of this confusion.

I'll retcon the wolf to a dog, but it will have to wait until I'm back in front of HeroLab tonight when I get home. Thanks for letting me make the change! I think it would be legal to rule that Ny'a just doesn't have her illegal wolf until the end of the scenario, at which point I would have to make the correction; this is much nicer.

I think that you would be much better served sticking to the official rules as detailed in the printed text as well as official documents such as the Player's Guide, FAQ, Additional Resources etc. Random comments by developers generally carry little to no weight in what is allowed in PFS. It might seem easier just to search this way for the answer you seek but it is also likely to be straight out wrong or just confusing. :)

When Ny'a fails the Ride check to attack along with her dog, what else can she do, if anything? Any standard action that's not an attack? No standard actions at all?

My reading of the text is that you can take any other actions that are not an attack action. Trying to attack with your mount is a free action so it will not impact your action economy.

This turn your character has a full turn of actions.

So you could for example:

1)Channel energy
2)Take the full defence action
3)Draw a wand and activate it
4)Cast a spell (will provoke unless you cast defensively)
5)Lay on Hands on your mount.

Plus you can combine this with a swift action like Lay on Hands on yourself.