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Ah, I was only glancing at it and had it on my mind at work. The way the text described it made me think it had swords for hands and one of them literally got cut off. That along with the picture made me think that was what was going on. Still, overall fun adventure. Look forward to running it at some point.
Had this pop up at another table today when I played it, and wanted to fact check it before I end up running it. First combat question: We had one table get TPKd on the low tier by the robot in the first combat. GM running the encounter ruled that it was 2handing the long sword and power attacking with it I'm guessing, ending up with something like +12 to damage at first level. The module says that it lost its offhand sword earlier. Now here's the question, which is sort of silly, but bear with me. It appears from the picture that this thing's swords are actually its arms? So if it lost one earlier, it shouldn't be able to 2hand a weapon because it only has one hand to work with. Which interpretation is the right one?
My alchemist wears a Frontovik's Gas Mask - 17000g, head slot. Allows its wearer to breathe anywhere, including underwater and space, makes you immune to harmful gasses and vapors (including cloudkill), and lets you see through normal and magical clouds, fog, and mist as long as you're inside the area of it. Plus, it's an awesome WW1 era gas mask that you get to come up with a cool story of how you got it. Great for my stinking and smoke cloud lobbing alchemist. Also great to pass to party members. I know my friend's Tetori Monk likes to be able to grapple freely inside the could of poisonous gas.
Is it safe to assume I can use his arcane bond to use summon monster IX? or does the lack of spell book force me to not assume that a 17th level conjuration wizard doesn't know how to cast summon monster IX? Earlier up in the thread, someone said that you should limit what he can cast with his arcane bond to spells he'd normally have prepared for his tier/difficulty. So on hard mode, yes, by all means, arcane bond a summon monster 9. On normal mode... well.. there's a reason they don't give it to him as a prepped spell. Krune's hard enough without having to fight him and a Glaabrezu (for instance). Edit: I should add that I'm not sure this was a hard and fast rule, just more of a guideline. I don't think it was decided whether it was an actual ruling.
It doesn't matter if you want to call them spells or not. They're not cast as spells, they're used as extracts. Although they tend to fall under the general spellcaster umbrella, Alchemists are not actually spellcasters. Yes, technically, Alchemical Allocation is a spell since it follows the spell format, but since it's an alchemist only spell, and per the most recent FAQ, alchemists can't craft magic items aside from potions, it isn't available anywhere as a spell in a wand or on a scroll for anyone else's use.
I think it is interesting that this thread has shown up at the sane time as the other thread about paladins wanting to pat themselves on the back for playing their paladins well. I agree that being good shouldn't impose a penalty, but the reward for playing good should be the warm and fuzzies in your conscience that you were doing the right thing. You shouldn't need someone telling you that you're a good boy and rewarding you for it like you're a valued family pet.
Or enforce misfire chances. I see two problems with this, from my experience playing with gunslingers. 1) A gunslinger probably wouldn't keep full attacking on the second round with a broken gun. He'd probably spend a grit to quick clear and just take one shot, maybe with vital strike for some extra damage. 2) Most enemies aren't going to still be standing after one full round of attacks. Most GROUPS of enemies probably aren't going to be standing either. Honestly though, I hold out that the real problem is, by the numbers, ranged combat is just much better, at least for just dealing damage, than any other kind of combat, even a lot of spells. Doesn't matter if you're using a bow or a gun, you'll see the same performance for all intents and purposes. With rapid shot and many shot, they just get too many attacks off in a round, and they get to full attack pretty much every round. There's no equivalent for melee classes, who also don't have any feat support to get things like pounce, which would help them out (excepting beast totem barbarians. Consequently, most barbarians I see are beast totem barbarians, and a lot of melee builds I see recommend splashing barbarian just to get it. It's just that much of a superior option). I'd rather see manyshot removed before I'd like to see significant changes to the way guns work. Guns DO still need some work, but as has been said before, that's a problem with how guns are written, not with the gunslinger class itself. If you took all instances of "gun" out of the class and replaced it with "crossbow" or something, I doubt you'd see as much complaint.
I'll second Alkenstar. As a place of weird magic and dead magic, but advanced tech, it seems like the Pathfinder society has been loathe to head out there to explore it. Plus, I know some GMs would like to get guns in the hands of their NPCs to give players a taste of their own medicine. Numeria, though I hear rumors that's going to be next season anyway. More adventures through Irrisen would be cool too. Oh, and Hermea. The pathfinder society might be vey interested in this little dragon run country and what secrets it might be hiding.
I'd rather they just give someone the job of answer forum questions about why they do things. John does a great job when he can weigh in, but he can't be in every thread at once and also manage PFS.Are you offering to pay their salary? Who said anything about paying them? That's what interns are for. "Larry, get me a coffee, and then go be a lightning rod for hate on the PFS boards for six hours. Your last two hours will be memorizing obscure rules from out of print player companions. Why are you still here? Move move move!"
There's some gnome luck thing that allows it that I've seen. And it was fine. The gnome racial ability works only if you roll a 1 on the die, and only once per day. My samurai that has it has never used it in 8 levels. He prefers to fail his will saves on a 2. Not nearly as good as having a free re-roll at your fingertips for any circumstance.
Hey what did I do? and where did that d come from?now I expect to see a new cult of Caldira form up in my local PFS. Thanks guys.Besides you and Findlanderboy, who else in our area actually reads the boards that close? Obviously Garble Facechomper does, and he has Chaldiran convert written all over him. But shhh. Don't bring logic into this.
You know, making threads on these traits just makes them more wide spread. When I have to look at a list of hundreds of traits, pick two, whenever I make a character, I don't go through all the traits to see which ones are the "best." I mostly stick to a handful of good standby traits. But no, now we have a thread on it, so now I expect to see a new cult of Caldira form up in my local PFS. Thanks guys.
Kinda weird question about the new Arcanist and his ability to consume magic items. New Arcanist here. If the Arcanist eats a magic item in a scenario, keeping in mind that he can only consume normally consumable magic items anyway, should those items be marked off the chronicle sheet since they're destroyed? Additionally I guess, if a party finds a magic item with charges during a scenario and they use all the charges during said scenario, should that item be marked off the chronicle since it's all used up?
It just seems like disallowing the evil alignment has created more arguments, discussion, and retreading of topics than just allowing it might. Okay, sure, pvp relations would be strained a bit more, maybe. But disallowing it has forces people who want to be that kind of dark sided character (and I'm not saying this is everyone who made a character like this, but I know it is some) to twist their character concept to the breaking point to make it fit in the PFS world. Instead of being a LN cleric of Asmodeus who is beuracratic and malicious to the point of evilness but still not evil guys, really! they could just be evil. The guy who wants to be a necromancer could just be a necromancer. Threads that are opened to ask "Hey, is casting this spell with the evil descriptor an evil act?" could just be answered with "Yup." and we could move on. In a game world sense, we'd get to see another side of the society that I think hasn't really been explored much, the society's darker elements. I've been in a lot of threads like these. People frequently point out that the society does some shady, if not outright evil things all the time, despite the people carrying out those missions being of neutral or good alignment. Also, another thing, if the society is made up of good and neutral aligned characters, shouldn't it be skewed more towards good? BNF, you said it yourself in a post I couldn't like hard enough. "That guy over there thats detecting as evil? Yeah, don't stick a sword in him. Thats the premiere expert on ancient thasalonian/native interactions in the inner sea. Your job is to get him to the dig-site, not re arrange his internal organs." I know this is probably going to be the unpopular solution, and because of that I'm probably not going to push too hard on it, but I think it is worth discussing open-mindedly in the thread. Edit: Additional thought. The game currently has a system in place for penalizing players for committing evil acts by dropping their alignment towards evil, but I feel like it is a toothless penalty, because no GM I've ever seen wants to be the guy that's like "Sorry, you kicked one too many orphans this game, I have to report you as dead and retire you character from PFS now." No one ever wants to be the guy who says you can't play now.
This thread has ballooned too much for me to follow it all the way through, but I wanted to put this idea out here. I'm sorry if it was already talked about. The pathfinder society is a neutral organization. What would happen if, keeping all other rules about PvP and the ideas of explore report cooperate in place, we just allowed people to make evil characters? How big of a change would that be to society play as a whole? It wouldn't be my first choice of solution, but it does seem like a decent way to just cut through the gordian knot of a debate this always ends up being.
When Baron Ulfhamr made his thread about blood magic a bit back, and we got into this exact same debate, someone also pointed out that there are scenarios in PFS where you discover that the society itself even has a necromancy lab. I'm not sure that's even a hidden fact, it may be mentioned in Seeker of Secrets. While I won't say the society necessarily condones necromancy, it's practical to have an understanding of it, and people in your employ that can do it, for this line of work. Undead are like the number 2 thing encountered in PFS, behind bad humans and ahead of evil outsiders. Having people around who understand how they work and can bend them to a better purpose is an excellent idea. More importantly, as a character who agreed to be a Pathfinder, that character should have allowances in his organizational view that he might sometimes be paired with a person like this. Likewise, the necromantic pathfinder is probably aware of the stigma against him in general, just like the diabolist pathfinder, and should be willing to compromise. That chosen compromise should not mean "if you fall I will leave you to die." That's bad for the society. It should be more like "If you fall, I will expend the minimum time and resources to get you back on your feet You should know that before we go into the Tomb of Poisoned Darts." "That's fine. I'll try to limit my offenses to your religion as much as I can to make sure we survive, but zombies make very good poison dart absorbers." "I'm a rogue. I'm good at spotting traps and stuff. I'll try and make having a bunch of zombies unnecessary so you can have one really big cool zombie." "My Vow of Poverty makes it so I don't have a lot of equipment, but I can buy some extra potions for the necromancer so he doesn't have to rely on the cleric for healing." Cooperate, dag nabbit!
I think it is stranger that your character concept would include "both being a pathfinder" and "not being willing to cooperate with other pathfinders." You don't have to set aside your character and not RP him in favor of hack'n slashing your way through a scenario if you're running, say, the lone Paladin in the group with a necromancer, diabolist, and bloatmage. You just have to take it as an RP challenge - how does your character reconcile his own faith with having to work with these people. Maybe you choose not to help them if they're in trouble, maybe you open a discourse and try and convert them, maybe you just bring a different character because even on Drendle Dreng's most senile day, even HE wouldn't put this group together. Being openly antagonistic with your fellow Pathfinders, however, should be your last option.
It's a toss up. Wizards that Paizo have made in other scenarios of a similar power level to Krune usually have all spells in their spell book from the core book up to like 6th or 7th level, except opposition spells, and all spells of their chosen school. I think the fairer option is to just go with what he has prepared though. He's been asleep for 10,000 years. Maybe he forgot what was written on the small of his back or something.
Another thing to keep in mind: Disguise checks are made in secret, so be careful walking into that courtroom Mr. Kissinger. Well, and here we get back into the argument about whether it's a visible mask, or if, like it says in the item description, it actually turns your face to stone. I envision it kind of like the Big Head mask from the Mask comics, where it basically eats your head replacing it with a statue head (Easter Island head. That actually sounds like a great skull and Shackles character, Redward). It could equally go. "Yes, I see that. Looks like a terrible case of greyscale. Are you sure you are fit to perform today?" "Of course, your Honor. I would be remiss if I put my own health above my duty to the law."
Another thing to keep in mind: Disguise checks are made in secret, so be careful walking into that courtroom Mr. Kissinger. "Sir, why are you wearing such thickly caked on makeup?" "I apologize, your honor. I have broken out in a skin rash, and did not want my horrifying appearance to distract the court. I did my best to cover it up for your pleasure." Now I have to bluff! Oh wait, I'm wearing an item that makes me good at that ;) Or don't even make it look like a normal face? Look like some kind of powdered up noble from the time period - white powdered up face with red rosy cheeks. In the long run though, this is a silly discussion. How many times have you sat down at a table and had a major part of the adventure decided by one bluff check? Or even seen an NPC with significant investment in sense motive? The item may be undercosted, I don't know how those things are decided, but it's not overpowered, and doesn't need circumstance penalties piled on it just because the GM doesn't like the item.
The animal archive still did a lot to help bigger cavaliers. Extra Magic Item slot feat to get a belt, slap a mongoose belt on it, now all your mounts have compression to fit basically anywhere you need it to. IT does feel item tax-ey though. Still, my samurai has never felt unusefull, even in places where I couldn't fit the mount for whatever reason. Part of why I don't believe in tier lists so much.
If you're worried about your axe beak becoming too big and cumbersome, there is an option for animal companions that get a size increase to leave them their base size. It should be under the animal companion entry for druids, but I think it's like, they get a +2 to str and con instead of whatever other bonuses they would normally get for advancing a size category. I don't think the medium axebak would get the 10 foot rech, as that is usually given to large size quadraped creatures that only have 1 natural attack. Or you could do what I did with my gnome samurai and just go mammoth rider prestige class to ride ze uber chicken.
My group with two pregens did fine, honestly. I won't honestly say they contributed to the fights really, but they got to play had had fun. It was a group of friends, and the rest of the party agreed it was fine, so I was fine with it. I may not be remembering the scenario right, but I don't think the tactics say anything about blasphemy usage, and a lot more about how he likes to mix it up in melee.
When I ran this, I had the same issue. Two level 7 pregens at the high tier table of everyone else being 10-11. I actually stopped the scenario and asked my VC if he thought it was cool to blasphemy right out the door and and take two people out of the major fight. We decided it was better if he saved it as a backup tool, so I didn't use it until he got to about half health or so. Last fight was epic. The party I was running for was all tank or control characters, so it was a lot of attacks bouncing off on both sides until I had the boss get fed up and just try and drag someone under water to drown them. That plan... could have gone better.
I know when I ran this, yes, I prioritized the WiSC getting the implant attack done, which it did on the second round, successful save against chestbursters, moving on. After that, I prepped a little bit for this scenario by reading about WiSC in Misfit Monsters revisited. They're ambush hunters and to some extent, thrill seekers. They love taking down bigger and more dangerous prey, so after getting its implant off, I figure it does anything it can to kill everything around it, especially since it's mad from being poked by Babaus for the last few minutes.
wait to take revelation until 7 (can still have access via ring of revelation or armor that does same thing). take animal ally (and nature soul pre req). animal companion of level - 3. you double dip levels. I think the intention of that last line in the feat is that it stacks in the same way multi-classing as two classes that get animal companions stacks and is not meant to let you double dip in you companion's level.
Beastrider Cavalier can get a bear, but only if you're a medium sized character and not until 7th level: "In addition, a 7th-level or higher Medium beast rider can select any creature whose natural size is Large or Huge, provided that creature is normally available as a Medium-sized animal companion at 7th level (like a bear). " Actually, you'd have to be small to get a bear companion as a cavalier. Bear's start small and advance to medium at 4th level. Other classes that gets easy access to bear companions is the Mad Dog Barbarian Archtype and Clerics and Inquisitors with the animal domain.
As I've said in another thread, I feel like the Thassilonian Specialist boon is one of the best boons I've seen, since beyond being a reward for that particular player, it feels like it represents a victory for the Pathfinder Society as a whole. "Oh, we did this awesome thing and discovered this lost knowledge. Let's train some Pathfinders in this knowledge now." I'd love to see more PrCs and archetypes opened up that way. I think I missed the whole Hellknight and Winter Witch conversation before, but those both sound like reasonable things to tie to a scenario. I'm curious. The special boon for Way of the Kirin and Rivalry's End are similar to this discussion. Both had a fantastic reward that everyone wanted, and both were announced ahead of time that some kind of super cool reward would be there. What was the feedback on that like?
+1 to rotating the more exotic races (I hate the term monstrous races when you have gnomes and half-orcs as core races). I was actually surprised to see that the Tian Xia races didn't become opened up after seasons 3 and 4, since season 3 was all about opening lodges across the sea, and season 4 sort of cemented that.... buuut I can see reasons for limiting the exotic races. I know there's many aasimars now in our area. Some of them I know were picked just because Blood of Angels opened up cool RP opportunities for them, but more I know were picked for their perceived mechanical advantages. At the same time, I know my GF was super happy for like two days when I told her Tengu had opened up, since that's all she ever wanted to play. It seems like a seasonal or yearly rotation for exotic races strikes a good balance between limiting options to discourage power creep, but also giving people who don't get to cons the chance to try out some of the other race flavors. Heck, I'd even love to see holiday boons that open up themed races. (John Compton! Hear me! It's not too late to issue a boon for halloween allowing you to make a dhampir or skinwalker!) Edit: 24 for your chart, Jiggy.
Eric... how many scenarios can you think of where the Pathfinders engage in open combat in the middle of the street with arcane spell casters, which is the only situation I can think of where someone would maybe pull out the bendy straw to drink an enemy's blood for blood transcription? Every wizard I've fought so far has been behind some sort of closed doors, or in a town like say, Riddleport, where that kind of thing might be overlooked. I get where you are coming from. PFS is usually played publicly, and having the guy at the table who talks about flaying his enemies to drink their blood like he's drinking the juice from a peach, probably not good for business in a store. Those types of players though, in my experience, tend to get filtered out of a group because they make other people at the table uncomfortable as well, and eventually get the hint to either tone it down or start their own games elsewhere. However, calling for changes to the game because of what some people might do at a table or because you don't like how people have fun smacks of "don't do that, it's badwrongfun" which is something I struggle with doing myself, but realize, my idea of fun isn't the same as everyone else. This topic is fun to read, but it has gotten way off track. At this point, I think the only thing to do is consider what has been said here the next time you sit at a table with a necromancer, and ask yourself is his undead raising ways are any worse than the barbarian's decapitating ways, the wizard's imp familiar, or the inquisitor's black and white views on right and wrong. Above all else, ask yourself why your character would be a PATHFINDER if he wasn't ready to Explore, Report, and COOPERATE.
Slightly off topic, this quote makes me chuckle a little bit. I know this wasn't his intention when he stated it, but it's implying that using an [evil] spell causes you to become more evil. My the same extension, an [acid] spell would make you more corrosive, a [fear] spell would make you more afraid, and a [mind-affecting] spell would make you... smarter? More mental? I don't know. Although I guess that's also technically true that you do become all these things when spells with descriptors are cast! Anyway, just a funny thought. Back to the topic at hand.
The QFP boon is also an extreme bad exaple for this, or maybe extreme good example of why boons should be a bit more aplicable to multiple characters. The extra special boon from the QFP line, if I recall right, actualy requires you to have 3 seperate chronicles to get this one boon, so it's not even really feasible for most people to burn GM stars on.
So... evil spells both turn you evil and don't turn you evil? My understanding was that using evil spells to do evil things turned you evil, but using spells with the Evil descriptor wasn't inherantly evil, just restricted if you're, say, a good cleric. And I know for PFS play a lot is restricted. I'm talking more about the Pathfinder game as a whole. But yeah, that's a topic for a whole other thread.
If a boon shows up on a chronicle sheet that I can't use, but others can, that's fine. It looks like it's going to happen a lot this season with the faction boons, and has even happened to me already where I wished I ran a scenario with a different character because the one I ran it with was the "wrong" faction. What people don't like is seeing a boon they could have used on another character, and then also no one at the table being able to use that boon, so it's literally a wasted boon. The party of cleric/wizard/fighter/rogue who runs Quest for Perfection part 3 is probably going to look at that chronicle and be disappointed in nine out of ten cases. Additionally? The GM credit is great, but not everyone feels comfortable GMing. It can be daunting to newer players, and not to put anyone down, but some people get anxious over being, essentially, the center of attention. Like stage fright.
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