Adam Mataja's page

Suggestions:

- Fish for natural 20s. Have a horde of low level monsters. Some will hit eventually. It's what I and my GM buddy always do. No AC is too high.

- Use Army or Swarm templates for large amounts of enemies. They ignore AC.

- Fish for natural 1s. Damage is never received through AC alone. Get rid of this thinking. A low level bad of goblins could cause an small rock slide for example (DC 15 Reflex Save to avoid 3d6 dmg). Set 20x of these small bands for below average encounter and someone will roll natural 1.

- 20x bodaks in ambush solve most of problems.

- Have 9x low level NPCs gank up on paladin and Aid Another to the big brute.

- Hazard + average type of fight can guarantee the dmg done. Fire Elementals in hot environment for example.

- 50x Harpy archers.

- Go insane. Add a monster beyond any PF charts that ignores all damage received until certain condition is met inside combat. For example, lich has 5x magical pillars which provide him immunity to everything. Pillars need to be destroyed first.

Long story short. Conventional ideas probably wouldn't work on High Level Mythic. You have to brutal, above brutal. Insane above insane. At least, I suspect so. I haven't luckily played or GMed Mythic.

Adam

I would image that planet like Mars might have more unique monsters typical to it's ecosystem.

It reminds me of the Dune movie honestly. Large titanic worms that roam the planet, unique societies which all struggle for resources such as food, electrical energy and of course water. From monsters, I would imagine many sand and earth type beings being present throughout the planet such as earth elementals, insects of many kinds, plants that strive in low water environment, etc. But I would imagine that of greater danger would be planet hazards and not necessarily monsters themselves. When you are dehydrated, starved and taking a heat, even a few goblins might pose a serious threat to anyone.

Adam

I play my 5 Cha dwarf as a person that questions any acts against lawful institutions, laws and authorities, and acts towards such laws, but not at the expense of the party's total decision. I usually leave some space for party to either Bluff him successfully or divert his attention if they wish so. In general, he tends to be annoying as hell, but is still occasionally good speaker (he has good Diplomacy score despite bad Charisma).

If I remember right, a player has to choose a character if he has one for appropriate tier to play (not subtier). If he doesn't have one, he may choose to play a pregen. Even if he chooses to play a pregen, he has to assign the pregen to already created character or a new character. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong here.

So in the end, playing a pregen character to change APL isn't exactly a valid option. It's option for some players, not all of them.

@Sensian

For me, that's classical case when a GM doesn't know what to do and follows the listed tactics blindly. Don't get me wrong, if you followed tactics in scenario, you did fine, but the end result is most important, if the players had fun in the scenario or not.

@Lau Bannenberg

I tend to forget how everyone here is salty on every text you make. When I said "assisting" I did mean coaching players, but about the game system in general. We often get new, but causal players, who don't know much about Pathfinder and I don't feel like explaining people outside the session for hours about how the system works. Instead, I teach them through the gameplay.

But even when I am not coaching new players, I generally want players to succeed on their tasks, and that's just it. I am not getting the same vibe from other GMs. They are way more opposed to the players then me. This creates resentment slightly in players and a small mistake like that tends to turn away our already small pool of players.

But I am starting to derail a bit now and I don't expect everyone to understand my attitude anyway. My apologies.

@Wei Ji

You are scratching the waters of very old history where all sorts of things happened before. If I remember right, players had bigger liberty before of choosing which subtier they might play. The end result was that some players crossed the WBL boundary by obtaining too much gold. While this might not be the only reason of changes back then, I believe it was a primary one.

I do feel that players are often forced to play certain subtier with current rules, but I didn't have any bad experiences with it. It seems generally as correct as it can be.

Adam

People really tend to get trigger-happy with accusations if something is not up to their taste.

Play the game and if at the end of it you don't feel happy about it or you feel as you have been punished for nothing, talk with the GM about it. He is a human being, just like you. He makes mistakes also.

Hello everyone,

I kinda came up with idea to create a short 2-3 pages long PFS survey aimed at players in our local area. The objective would be to gain some insight into their current pleasure or displeasure with our local community, PFS in general, scenario's and GM's, so we are trying to come up with the list of "good to ask" questions for them. We could use some minor help with those.

So far, I'v come up with few general questions; how pleased are players with PFS community, how much informed are they about it and how problematic do rules seem for them and how pleased are they with the scenarios. (this is just general description of those questions)

Thanks upfront for responses :)

Adam

The monster would spit him out or his growth would stop. I feel that I'v read somewhere that you cannot reach larger size then the space available to you, but I can't remember anymore.

Adam

I am personally way more simplistic in my love for necromancers. A flat wizard with subschool in necromancy is good enough for me, but then again, that's just me. I always imagined them like arrogant mages who delved too deep into the art of necromancy. Pathfinder allows you to build the type of character however you want. Perhaps first general idea that you should ask your self is, do you want your character to be arcane or divine based class? Arcane class (wizard) is probably a bit more versatile and offensive while divine classes (cleric, oracle) are typically less versatile and more defensive.

Also a minor note, it might be good idea to invest in social skills for maximum enjoyment and not to depend too heavily on animated undead. Due to their nature, necromancers tend to be picked on rather easily. You can't just walk through the village with several undead skeletons without attracting trouble. In fact, necromancers are villains most of the time in campaigns. It might be a good idea to develop a good reason why would such a character join the party, as well as his future plans and motives.

Adam

@cablop

Sure :)

Note about Fortitude Save: Most of the sonic effects use Fortitude Save. You might feel that this effect affects mind in mental way, but it doesn't necessarily. It simply forces you to temporarily lose motoric functions of your body. At least that's how I imagine it.

Dazing Blast

School evocation [sonic]; Level bard 3, sorcerer/wizard 3
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Range 15 ft.
Area cone-shaped burst
Duration 1d3 rounds
Saving Throw Fortitude negates; Spell Resistance yes
Description
A cone of invisible energy springs forth from your hands, causing intense disorientation. Roll 2d4 and add your caster level (maximum 15) to determine the total number of HD of creatures affected. Creatures with the fewest HD are affected first. Among creatures with equal HD, those who are closest to the spell's point of origin are affected first. HD that are not sufficient to affect a creature are wasted.
The effect can penetrate through barriers, but creatures behind them receive +2 bonus on their saving throw to resist it and the duration of effect is reduced to 1 round.

There you go.

Adam

Sure. Give him 40 Str and reduce all his other stats to 3. Lead a balanced game of both social interactions, roleplay and combat, and he should realize how pointless his 40 Str is.

On a more serious note, no, it's most likely not fair of him to ask such a thing. Yes, you can somewhat balance this out probably, but 40 Str is the Strength of gods, titans and giants. He is unrealistic completely.

I would totally encourage him to try to reach such strength through the campaign though. It might be a cool quest sort off.

Adam

I have a private of group of players which are pranksters, jokers, brash occasionally and always choose poor to average decisions. A similar group as yours perhaps? Thankfully, they have a single player to guide them with good logical and deductive skills, otherwise it might be hard to GM for them.

Players have a high tendency (well, at least those that I have met thus far), to not use even 50% of their brainpower. A lot of people come at session tired from their personal or business lives and expect just to have fun. I am not saying that there is anything wrong about that, but it tends to put some dose of mental stress on GM occasionally. At that point, have a talk with them and explain them what you expect from them. Be polite, kind and nice. If necessary, remind them several or more times about and if that doesn't work...

In general, you have two options left. Change your mindset and gaming style or change your players gaming style to suit yours. Whichever option you choose, make sure to stick with it. If you loosen up too much, you'll be at the same situation again.

That's some general advice, but I am not sure how serious your situation is so perhaps there are even better ways to approach it.

Adam

Traps in Pathfinder requires some improvements in general. In a private homegame, they can be tweaked, but in more official games like PFS, there is little to no fun in playing them out. Here is a few things I feel that are missing in Pathfinder traps:

- Their CR should be lower by 1 point since traps typically do not pose enough danger to a group of adventurers. Wand of CLW or Summon Monster I can be used to disarm traps effectively, but we all know that story.

- More complicated traps (magical or mechanical ones) should be resettable by default. This mechanic isn't used often enough and simple traps with average or low effects become more dangerous through a long run forcing adventurers to either avoid them somehow or invest into Disable Device skill.

- Traps should be made as part of an encounter or part of a longer trap chain as often as possible. In such circumstances, they can even reduce the action economy of adventuring party or even become deadly enough. A combination of several low CR traps can likewise be used with much deadlier effect (per current PF rules) then assigning it to a single stand-alone trap of same CR.

- Simple mundane traps shouldn't require Disable Device skill to be disarmed. Disarming a trip wire or a small foot-hold trap for example is easy enough.

- Trap rules need to be further expanded. Some traps might be easily visible, but hard to disarm and vice versa. A mine in middle of minefield could be easily visible (DC 10 Perception check), but very hard to disarm for example (DC 25 Disable Device check). GM's need these kinds of rules to create much larger variety of traps.

That's a few points and ideas that I have noticed thus far. I am fairly sure that if those five points would be solved, everyone, even GM, might enjoy themselves with making and avoiding traps.

Adam

@Organite

Hello fellow GM!

I have a decent experience in dealing with Magus class as a GM. The class in general brings a lot of "nuke" or "nova" abilities which allow it to shine in combat up to their fullest potential and single boss or monster encounters tend to end poorly against them. I'v had bosses literally 1-shoted from full health, down to minus Constitution in PFS games and it doesn't surprise me anymore what they can do so here is few general and anti-magi tips you can use in your homebrew games.

General Tips:

- Make sure that your players are playing their class properly. Magi tend to have a larger boost in action economy (something which Core Classes don't get so easily) so a single slip-up of allowing them an extra move action can mean life or death against a monster. Several mistakes that I have seen players doing is for example: using multiple swift actions or forgetting to use defensive casting while casting a spell.

- Ban the traits which reduce the metamagic level of spell by 1 if you haven't already (optional). These traits coupled with Intensify spell on Shocking Grasp allow Magi to deal 10d6 damage on level 10 plus other possible bonuses. The 10d6 isn't too much of a problem until it scores a critical hit, which usually ends encounter against BBEG. By banning these traits, you will reduce Magi's power spike on higher levels.

- Study the combat section of CRB. I am dead serious. This will help you to lead proper and more challenging encounters in general. I for example always use Trip or Disarm on AoO when characters encounter a large sized creature. It forces them to waste a round always.

- Do not attempt to counter characters but instead aim for their weaknesses (such as low Reflex Saves). If you are countering their regular tactics, make sure to do so sparingly.

Magi Tips (although they are more general also):

- Push them in combat early. Drop Fireball on characters, set a terrain trap or let your archer minions pepper a single Magi with arrows. If you push them and reduce their hp early, they will waste a round or two to either heal or set-up a defensive spell. Magi on defensive is spending less time attacking and they usually have few defensive spells prepared.

- Use mooks (additional low CR monsters or NPCs). This is the top advice I can give you and the most powerful tool in your arsenal. It's not about giving PC's extra loot, it's what mooks can do. Nine goblins are CR 4 encounter. Completely useless alone, but they can stall and stretch the fight more then you might think. Assign all nine goblins around BBEG and let them Aid Another to AC. You can bump his AC like this up to 18 if all succeed on it. That's pretty damn impressive. Besides the fact that mooks can empower your BBEG, they keep your players happy. Why? Mostly because characters have a lot more to do and that kind of encounter allows everyone on the table to shine as they slaughter through goblins mercilessly round after round.

- Do not use single BBEG encounters. You noticed this already, but it's even worse. It will force you to amp the difficulty of single monster encounters to a point where you might cross the line such as giving all BBEGs immunity to certain spells or making their AC too high. You can somewhat use these encounters if you mix in other effects such as illusions or traps into it. It might give BBEG more time to act.

- Illusions are awesome. Set a Minor Image of a vile devil infront of door and watch your Magi players waste their spells pointlessly. They are also the best defensive spells. Effects like Mirror Image or Displacement can negate attacks completely. Funny enough, they are also the most common defensive spells that Magi use.

- Stretch encounters and time between them. Magi as every class have limited resources per day and by stretching encounters and time between them, they will waste more spells and abilities. Duration of buffs is critical also. Round buffs should last for a single battle, per minute buffs encounter or two, per tens of minute buffs or higher sufficiently for entire dungeon.

That's several tips that came on top of my head at the moment,

Adam

@Mark Hoover

Let me tell you what a player told me once I asked him why he took so many combat feats: "Because it all boils down to combat". I personally like combat as a GM, but I like it in a golden middle, not too much of it, not too little. Even after I specifically declared to my players that they may build any characters they wish to, they still built them for combat exclusively and took exclusively combat feats. I was and still am slightly disappointed with it, but it was their choice so I complied and moved on. My advice, let him take what he wants, but if he starts to complain about it, explain him politely what your campaign is about.

The best advice that I can give you is that you will get used to it eventually. It's not a bad position honestly. I have learned many things from GM's perspective about people, communication and behavior in general.

You are spinning in an over-analyzing circle. This isn't opened can of worms, it's about something that you disagree with.

I am in the similar murky waters as nosig. It's pretty much an argument over a piece of paper for me, but then again, I only see this paper as something cool, not something unfairly won. I bet that if you asked players at those conventions the same question "Do you feel that Con GMs are getting race boons unfairly?" the most would say "No". Giving some additional non-race boons per number of GM stars might be cool, but people will always complain about forbidden fruit I guess.

Adam

@DM Blake

Sigh. My words always get a bit misinterpreted.

Scratch the word "waste" and insert the word "spend". I guess it sounds more like what I wished to explain.

I'v been convincing people all the time that class has little to do with a character you wish to make. It simply helps you make a character that you envisioned during gameplay.

One of the less stereotypical characters that I made so far was Urban Barbarian whose persona is completely different. He's seen a lot of wars between the tribes of his people, and after so many blood shed, he looked at the battlefield and notice many young people in it. The scene changed his heart and he is always trying to avoid unnecessary bloodshed (has ranks in Diplomacy) especially against young and naive people itching for a fight. He will use non-lethal damage if possible and to further go away from 2h Power Attacking barbarians, he is using TWF with battleaxe and a dagger (I kinda got sick and tierd of seeing 2h wielders all the time).

Adam

I didn't read entire thread besides a first original post, but here is a thought to ponder on. Making a phylactery means leaving all positive emotions that make a human being locked in a single box. It does include soul also, yes, but making a phylactery is personal process that usually lasts dozens of years. Each phylactery recipe is hence different.

What I would include in making such recipe is around twenty or so human's most positive emotions (such as love, hope, joy, happiness, gratitude, etc.) and instead of collecting items, tell the character that he has to prove through in-game world how to remove such emotions (making NPC to fall in love with him but returning none until NPC kill himself, doing several acts that should provide joy but showing none, tricking NPC into taking his entire wealth, etc.). It's a more daunting task then collecting several items, don't you think?

Adam

@richard develyn

I think you did it fine. Some of the new Beastiary creatures (and Oceanid is from Beastiary 4) are quite brutal. The higher you go toward new Beastiaries, the tougher they get. I kinda suspect that this in response to more powerful player options in general, but that's another topic. As long as party hasn't died, they can learn on their mistakes next time. Sometimes, GM has to pull out more bigger guns in play.

I have run all the six books of RotR AP and I will suggest advice a bit different from others, which you probably won't listen.

There is no need to optimize your character into a death machine, nor to dump stats to 5 or 6. RotR assumes 4x average class PCs with 15 pts buy. The fact that you have 25 pts buy is already enough on it's own. Take your time and pick some flavor feats. With inquisitor as a class, you have enough field that you can safely cover. Also, check a bit on Varisian lore and deities. You might be interested into that later.

Adam

For those that wonder if encounter's CR is higher due to water:

Favorable Terrain for the PCs: An encounter against a monster that's out of its favored element (like a yeti encountered in a sweltering cave with lava, or an enormous dragon encountered in a tiny room) gives the PCs an advantage. Build the encounter as normal, but when you award experience for the encounter, do so as if the encounter were one CR lower than its actual CR.

Unfavorable Terrain for the PCs: Monsters are designed with the assumption that they are encountered in their favored terrain—encountering a water-breathing aboleth in an underwater area does not increase the CR for that encounter, even though none of the PCs breathe water. If, on the other hand, the terrain impacts the encounter significantly (such as an encounter against a creature with blindsight in an area that suppresses all light), you can, at your option, increase the effective XP award as if the encounter's CR were one higher.

If the party member sees paladin naked in bed with a picture of his favorite goddess? Uh oh!

@Boomerang Nebula

That would be delusion, not illusion.

For starters, tell your player to roleplay a wish, not to give a mechanical text of an ability that he wants.

What people forget is that ton of these Initiative penalty debuffs last. They last for a long time guys. Thunderstone penalty lasts an hour. Unprepared Combatant lasts in minutes. These are great stuff for NPCs, but not for PCs.

I doubt that's gonna cut it as I did the same. I barely managed to keep up on lv18 with CR+5 templates and the party had 20 pts-buy.

@Duiker

I love that idea also! I was thinking of giving something to a player which character just died, something like ghost sight or visions of past. It might go really well because he is the party's main diplomat.

Malag wrote:

@alex1976

This is from Dexterity Ability Score description:

"A character with a Dexterity score of 0 is incapable of moving and is effectively immobile (but not unconscious)."

You cannot perform any Dexterity check. You do not have a penalty, you simply cannot perform such a check. Fly skill, is a Dexterity based skill check in such case and you cannot perform it. Fly spell says nothing about giving a free floating service in the air so whatever happens is GM's call. This pure RAW reading unless I missed something. RAI might be another story.

I have been mistakenly using this persons quote, and their following opinion, as RAW. It is not.

It appears you CAN make Fly skill checks, though at a hefty penalty.

So... with the assumptions that you control Fly spells mentally, and are somehow unencumbered, you may actually Fly normally, assuming you are rolling high enough to make the checks.

I apologize for my misinformation folks. It was not intentional.

You haven't been mistakenly using anything, in fact, if anyone is failing to use common RAW logic, it's you. A person with a Strength of 0 cannot do anything. A person with Dexterity of 0 also cannot do anything. If the Fly spell was purely mental, Intelligence would replace Dexterity which would imply mental use.

To counter use your logic, there is nothing written in Fly spell requiring mental control. Yes, I am literally advocating that you cannot prove which spell requires mental action and which does not. Rules do not describe what mental actions are, so the best thing we can do is to use "common sense" which is of course going to differ from person to person.

If anyone should prove otherwise, it's you because you are adding a new ability to the Fly spell that shouldn't exist there. As it is, you are claiming that caster can move, yet not use move action. This isn't supported by rules and only few abilities and spells have such effects in the game.

@alex1976

This is from Dexterity Ability Score description:

"A character with a Dexterity score of 0 is incapable of moving and is effectively immobile (but not unconscious)."

You cannot perform any Dexterity check. You do not have a penalty, you simply cannot perform such a check. Fly skill, is a Dexterity based skill check in such case and you cannot perform it. Fly spell says nothing about giving a free floating service in the air so whatever happens is GM's call. This pure RAW reading unless I missed something. RAI might be another story.

Malag wrote:

The problem is also that in order to "hover" you need to succeed on DC 15 Fly check and paralyzed character cannot attempt such a check. Entire Fly skill explains in it's own way that flying creatures cannot hold still at a single space without being expert flyers (Hover feat) or simply having a good Fly skill.

It would make most sense to me that subject slowly starts to descends at the ground because subject cannot float on the spot without it requiring some physical effort. The fly spell has built in feather fall effect among other things and it wouldn't cease to exist if the time for the spell hasn't expired.

Adam

I see your point, but do not agree with it.

This reading implies that you are flapping your arms or performing some other physically obvious action to use the spell...

That's not true. Read the above text of the Fly skill. With a Dex of 0, you literally cannot fly and you cannot float on the spot. The only conclusion to me is that you descend or drop.

The problem is also that in order to "hover" you need to succeed on DC 15 Fly check and paralyzed character cannot attempt such a check. Entire Fly skill explains in it's own way that flying creatures cannot hold still at a single space without being expert flyers (Hover feat) or simply having a good Fly skill.

It would make most sense to me that subject slowly starts to descends at the ground because subject cannot float on the spot without it requiring some physical effort. The fly spell has built in feather fall effect among other things and it wouldn't cease to exist if the time for the spell hasn't expired.

Adam

I believe that instead of asking these questions in this topic yourself (it was a good call though), the GM should be the one consulting himself with other people. Some of the posters above offered additional aid already with the AP itself.

To answer your initial question - it's hard to define being overpowered if you are playing by Mythic rules. I never used those rules, but to me, it seemed normal to a degree. The person to blame is your GM who gave you too much on game start probably. This happens all too often really. I did the same mistake myself.

Also a note, Vital Strike doubles weapon dice only, not the total damage output. There might be something changed in how it works on Mythic Rules though, in which case, feel free to ignore this part of text.

Adam

For the reference, you could simply take Core Cleric class and not use medium or heavier armor, grab a staff and put several ranks in Diplomacy or Perform (oratory) which is enough to play a typical priest who walks around propagating his religion and supporting his allies. If you however wish to specialize more, check the Cloistered Cleric, Evangelist or Merciful Healer archetypes. These archetypes are closest to what you want I believe.

Playing a support class is fairly easy as long as you know right spells. Take a good look at your party and see what they are playing and then choose spells that complement them most. Some of the level 1 spells that are good picks for example are (if you are starting at such level): Bless, Cure Light Wounds, Protection from Evil/Chaos, Shield of Faith. You can likewise use wands of these spells later around level 5 or more and they might still prove useful at the task.

Take a good look at domains also. There is a lot of great domains out there but it depends on your deity and how you plan to play your character. Feats are likewise dependent on how you plan to play your character, but one of the standard support cleric feats would be Selective Channeling.

That's all I could come up with currently,

Adam

Charmed person acts like a normal person in all aspects, but it simply favors the caster that charmed him as a trusted friend. I would probably treat entire situation as regular social encounter which would include a Diplomacy check to convince such individual but in general, PCs should have a chance of convincing him.

Adam

Seems like you are already becoming better GM. Keep up!

Adam

From your description, which is mostly story-like description, your players have pretty low understanding of Pathfinder game mechanics. Every action costs something; standard action to cast magic, move action to move at base movement speed, quick action to use judgement or arcane pool, etc. Your Pathfinder knowledge is most likely horrible because you just started and it's possible that your group is using this to their advantage although I am not saying they are doing so intentionally.

Your best course of action is to open a Core Rulebook and start reading. It's gonna take some time, but there is no easy way around it. Learn the rules and understand them. The more you learn, the more you can respond to your players with things like "gloves of shaping auto-killing golem" (if I understood it right).

Additional tip, magic isn't everything. Spells do what is written in their description and nothing more. Magic cannot and can rarely kill outright. "Auto-kill" effects are literally non-existant.

Adam

I really do not wish to criticize anyone, but with all honesty, this "interleaving" word leaves a bad taste. It almost feels like someone teenager invented it just to provoke GM's further.

I am still sceptical about this gunslinger doing such insane damage. Gunslingers have their own bag of problems when they use too many attacks, namely miss-fire and the cost of ammunition. Advanced firearms to tend to lessen the effects of "gunslinging" however, so it boils down that your player receives too much "bang for their buck" while other players do not.

It would help out if you could provide this character's statistics. Sometimes problems lie in other areas also invisible to you.

Also, one more advice. In time where guns are common, every common bandit would carry one and every common bandit would carry some sort of protection against it. There are spells that grant bonus to AC against firearm attacks. This wouldn't punish the player, this would be a fair play. You wouldn't see a police officer today walking naked against criminals armed with firearms, so why would this world be any different?

Adam

In general, there is numerous ways of making encounters harder without actually increasing CR.

What every ranged character hates is Soft Cover, Cover and Concealment. Although these effects grant just penalties in general, over long periods of time, it can be pretty effective because they can be found everywhere. It takes a good knowledge of rules however to successfully implement them but the best idea that I can give you, is to use common logic when designing encounters. Surely you have watched some movies where bad guys always attack from ambush, outnumber the party, use the terrain to their advantage, attack during night, etc. It can inspire you to create some really impressive encounters. The imagination has limits however and I am sure that you won't make every encounter to be impressive. In such cases, put pressure on the gunslinger either through combat or limited time required. A simple trip and a threatening mook near gunslinger can be sufficient to slow him down or several civilians might get in the way.

This is just general advice on tactics, so I am not sure if it might solve your problem really. Make sure that Gunslinger is applying the rules for ranged combat appropriately. Even at low level, there are -2 for Rapid Shot, -2 for Deadly Aim, -4 if he doesn't have Precise Shot, +4 to AC from Soft Cover and additional effects. I am pretty sure that your player isn't following one of the above rules. Even a gunslinger at lv5 should have a rough 50-60% hit chance with all the rules above.

Adam

The answer is quite simple.

Grab a few branches with leafs and attempt to hide yourself during session with it. If the GM asks, you are roleplaying a plant!

I haven't read all comments, but here is what I managed to understand so far. Your GM gave you a lot of gold and in short, you have built a monster that out surpassed every other PC in the party.

To be honest, I partly agree with you. You shouldn't have to limit yourself just so other PCs can feel special. Once or twice in a few sessions, it might be okay, but constantly limiting yourself is preventing you from having a good and immersive gaming experience.

But you should also realize that life is a set of compromises. Having built such monstrous character which can easily handle encounters on his own defeats entire purpose of game. Some people do not wish to hear this, but having too strong character affects both party balance and gives GM more work. It's in your best interest, not to create a walking monster, but a viable character. Unfortunately, I haven't seen this construct's statistics, so I can't say for sure, but take my advice with a grain of salt if I understood something incorrectly.

We all wish to be special in our own way during gaming, but there are limits to everything. Having average viable character can be a good learning experience also.

Adam

Where do I draw the line?

If the players are giving you trouble due to constant character changing, talk with them and explain your concerns. Talking always fixes everything in most of cases, but if it does not, you can outright ban character changing for some period of time. It's exhausting as it is to keep introducing new characters as a GM every new game. If they cannot understand that, then the problem aren't the rules, but social etiquette.