He gets two bonded items that each work for their specific class.
There is no overlap in abilities. Treat your wizard and witch levels separately for each of them.
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I'd be hard pressed to argue that since a ray is treated as a weapon, it can't be conductive. The same argument could be made for bombs. They just call them weapons because then they don't have to repeat a bunch of rules. I'd also point out, that even though bombs use the splash weapon mechanic, you can't hand them off for someone else to throw and if you don't throw them immediately they stop working. I don't think bombs last long enough for the "supernatural" part to wear off. Since your conductive weapon (probably) doesn't use the splash weapon attack option, there won't be any splash. Unless you were using a shotgun-like firearm, because how fun is that. Ultimately I'd allow it because I cannot think of a way to abuse it. If you've thought of a way to abuse it, I suggest you disclose that information to your GM up-front. What I don't know for sure is how damage from conductive reacts to critical hits. I'm pretty sure only the weapon multiplies its damage because at this point all of your bomb is considered "extra dice" of damage.
I totally dig this. This is way cooler than my house rule: If you aim at one square of a larger creature to avoid firing into melee, that creature loses its size penalty to AC because you are only aiming at a "medium sized" portion of it. Can we also work on applying this to cover bonuses from allies that are between you and the larger foe? It'll simplify table discussions about "aiming over his head at the top half of the troll"
I've run campaigns both with and without XP tracking. My players seem happier when they don't see the numbers, and I just tell them when they level. When I run my homebrew stuff, I do objective based awards -- here's a thing you gotta do, and doing it gets you a level. I put in about a level's worth of crud between them and their objective, and at least half again as much as avoidable filler, and then I don't really sweat if they "defeat" enough "monsters". I assume if they get the job done, they've earned the level. As a player, I don't like bonus XP for roleplaying, unless that bonus XP is handed out to the group, for the group's overall roleplaying.
How does that make sense? If a paladin commits an evil act, he loses his powers right then. But, as a GM, you could justify saying to a character:"well, your smite evil doesn't work because, although the villian is commiting a evil act, his alignment is neutral."? Paladins are held to a higher standard. They get their class abilities by promising to act in a certain way, and when they break that promise, the deal is called off. If he willingly commits an evil act he loses his class abilities, but is still lawful good. Don't expect alignments in D&D to make sense. It'll just give you a headache. I can totally justify to a player that a guy committing an evil act isn't smite-able. Maybe he's animating these villagers to feed some starving gnoll babies somewhere. Specific actions do not define your alignment. You got to add it all up and take the average. The best villains are the ones that are complicated and have internal struggles, or misguided notions, or "for the greater good" mentalities. I'm guessing that you are playing a paladin, and you are having a hard time finding things to smite. This may be your DM building interesting and complex villains with tragic backstories, or he might just be jerking you around. So either congratulations, or condolences. EDIT: How is that I keep getting ninja'd by a gigantic psionic catfish? They shouldn't be that stealthy.
In an upcoming sourcebook, we're going to write additional material for the magic item crafting rules, further explaining and clarifying the nuances of how this works. I'm going to look over existing threads, FAQ entries, and FAQ-flagged threads, but I don't want anything to slip through the cracks, so I'm asking here: Is there anything else about the magic item crafting rules that could use more explanation or examples? Somebody tell Sean to put "The final price on custom magic items is ultimately the DM's decision" in that book.
As a rules question, you are smite-able if you have an E on your character sheet in the alignment section. What you are doing at any given moment is irrelevant. EDIT: ... freakin' ninjas.
The evil cleric cannot summon good creatures, because doing so gives the summon spell the [good] descriptor. He can summon a neutral creature to harass the paladin, but doing so does not make him neutral. Likewise the good cleric cannot animate dead, because it has the [evil] descriptor. It just ain't on his list of options. A neutral cleric could animate the dead to haul supplies to the orphanage, and would be committing an evil act for a good cause. Just the sort of shenanigans that make him neutral in the first place. An evil cleric could animate the dead to haul gnome-meat to the orphanage, and be committing two evil acts disguised as a good deed.
I don't mind items that are tailored for a class, though I do get annoyed if they exclude other classes that fit the theme. Cavalier's challenge and paladin's smite evil are pretty similar. Either could be interested in a mounted combat item. I saw a few items this year that favored one over the other when it could have included both. -- Handy Haversack is my measuring stick. It's one of the few items I'll blow the bank to buy at low levels, regardless of build, and I don't ever tire of it at high levels. It's a solid item, with an interesting twist besides just "extra-dimensional space". I'm not saying I want to see variations on it; I'm saying if there wasn't such a thing already, it would be a Superstar submission. If you were a mage inventor, and came up with a new magic item that you could:
it might be Superstar.
I've got two.
The second one I like. A Lot. I think once I wring out all the mistakes it has the makings of a Superstar entry. I hope I make the top 32, if only to show this off. Only concern now is this River Kingdoms curveball. Does it specifically have to be River Kingdoms flavored, or does it just have to be able to work there? Just not specifically flavored for anywhere else good enough?
Prowling the Paizo forums, and working on my archetype. And working on the game I have to run in 6 hours. Totally *not* blowing that off to vote. Nope. Nope.
Thoughts? Glorious. Though to play, you can only mark a space if you up-voted the item because it was the better of the two.
Where would I go to find entries/winners from last year?
I find it helps to read them aloud in a british accent. The bad ones end up sounding like a Monty Python skit.
But a "reject" button to prevent repeats seems smart. We aren't ranking the items from 1-900. We're looking for 64 keepers. Third, there are probably a few jerks out there deliberately down-voting good items in order to give their own item a better chance. We don't want to give them access to an instant-kill button.
next year's entry: Knife of Many Things
Slot -; Price 19 gp, 99 cp per month for three months; Weight 1 lb. Description
While in possession of this blade you are immune to fly effects, unless it is stored in an extra-dimensional space. Removing the tool during flight causes you to descend at 60 feet per round for 1d6 rounds.
I might need to work on the word count.
I'm pleasantly surprised to have not seen any XP in the crafting cost.
I also consider what this item would look like after some professional feedback. If the core idea is original and cool, and the problems can be easily fixed, I tend to be much more lenient. We're looking for an inventor, not a lawyer. By the time the judges get to it, they can look for both cool and perfect. I figure I'm just here to vote down things that are unsalvageable, in order to save their sanity.
Aside from the known guidelines, I also use the following criteria. Game Balance:
Price:
Clarity:
Am I going to have to talk to my DM/Player about it to make sure we both think it does the same thing?
I think I might need a break. I'm channeling Simon Cowell. I want to make some of these these contestants weep uncontrollably in front of a live studio audience.
I've drafted it, but there's a hole right where the Superstar part needs to fit.
Keep in mind the most important rule of web development: Never trust anything the client sends you. You can always heap on encoding and CRC checks, but I hear what you're saying. By no means am I saying you did it wrong, or suggesting you change mid-stream. You did your homework and went with a solid algorithm and an interface that was least likely to fail under strain. I think it safe to say that it was generally well received by the fan-base. I liked it, certainly, and it drove me to greater enthusiasm and participation that did last year's event. What I am saying is that I hope you do it again (but here's an itch I'd like you to scratch that might make it even better next time). By the by, do you have a bug report thing for this? I don't want to just post it, as it might be exploitable. And I don't want to look silly, as I'm 99% sure you already thought of and mitigated this.
I've seen nothing like what I submitted or considered submitting. I don't know if that's good or bad. I'd say it's good. You have broken from the herd, and will either take the lead or be devoured by lions. Either extreme is better then just being "meh".
Finally. Doubt I would have made Star Voter if there was any other way of knowing it submitted properly. Psst, Paizo; if voting slows down, do another cut. All the maniacs will be checking to see if we made it. Promise!
Not so much a phrase that I tire of, but there are a lot of decent items in the list if the authors had stopped writing after the first benefit.
I dunno, you can probably streamline this client-side. My method does assume that: a) having your item at the end of the queue encourages you to press on.b) we've got a large enough voting pool that any one item getting significantly fewer votes is statistically unlikely. c) the items end up being picked by an electoral college anyway, so our votes really just serve to sift out the junk a little, and give us something to do to make us feel useful while waiting to see who makes round 2. d) it is more important to Paizo that this experience is optimized for our (their customer's) enjoyment rather than for absolute fairness. It just has to be fair enough. The server side can always send back a response to re-order your list if it needs more or less votes on a particular item. The point is, it doesn't have to get bogged down tracking which user has seen which item. It can be done.
Mostly, I'm tired of seeing "You will be able to place your vote in ____ seconds." It should say "You must wait ___ seconds to become attuned to these entries." and that line should have filigree.
Right ... but the point was that it was a tradeoff between server load and ideal algorithms (for particular definitions of "ideal"). I dunno, you can probably streamline this client-side. Give each user a cookie that is basically numbers 1-N (N being the number of entries) in a pseudo-random order. This would be the queue for the order they see entries. Encode it to discourage cheating, naturally. When they load the page, they pull the next two numbers, and send a request to the server to get the textual details. By pseudo-random, I mean two things:
The combination of one minute delay and endlessly repeating items is making the voting process truly torturous. It's like working overtime as a line worker in a boredom factory. But it starts off fun, and gets decreasingly fun as you continue. I kinda like this, as it prevents one voter from skewing the results too much. A broad swath of participation is probably better than a few die-hard voters. That being said, it is also designed such that every voter walks away with a bad taste in their mouth, having reached their individual pain threshold. This is less good.
You won't have seen those two items paired together, though. That's the important part, judging each item against the other, not each item individually. Not so. I've seen the same two items paired together three times in a row. I considered it my punishment for voting them equal.
I'm getting a little tired of seeing bold tags on the item's title. bracket-B-bracket Filigreed Shadow Lantern of Safely Resting bracket-slash-B-bracket is better I don't down-vote for it, though.
The only thing you need to track for scrolls is the caster level and if it's arcane or divine. The requisite ability score is the one used for determining if they are able to learn/prepare that level of spell, for whatever class they are using to have that scroll's spell on their spell list. A cleric using a scroll uses his wisdom, and an oracle using that same scroll uses her charisma. Same for wizards vs sorcerers. Where it gets complicated is when the rogue steps in with a Use Magic Device check. He has to roll to pretend to be a caster with that spell on his list, and may have to roll again to pretend he's smarter, wiser, or more likable than he really is.
There's no rule for what information the DM gives you about the effects of your damage. Among the games I run and play in, the DMs give out information like: "Not all of that damage seemed to go through" (for DR)
Mostly because this means less math and less hassle for everyone at the table. It's customary, but not mandatory. All the DMs reserve the right to not tell. If you are shooting into a shadowy area, you might not be able to tell any of that. If your paladin smites a succubus in disguise, she may try to bluff that the smite damage wasn't doubled, or even didn't go through at all. She may also try to bluff that she doesn't have DR when somebody else hits her, by faking that it hurts more than it does. For consistency, in my games, this sort of information is based on either a perception or sense motive check, and the DC is usually so low (DC 0, for melee) that we don't bother rolling. In the rare cases where there's environmental or deliberate obfuscation involved, checks can be made. This is a house rule. I'd suggest the next time the DM balks at telling you, ask if you can make a perception or sense motive check to discern the effect of your attack. He can still say no, but it's a pretty reasonable request IMO.
But the normal duration of a potion of extended mage armor (CL 5) is 10 hours.
Ok, I see what your Perception question is. Bummer that I don't know the answer. Seems to me that there's a lot of confusing verbage going on right there. "Rain reduces visibility ranges by half, resulting in a –4 penalty on Perception checks." sounds like you don't actually reduce visibility, and that the -4 takes care of it for you. Maybe? We can FAQ this, but frankly we shouldn't need to. These are situational modifiers, and as a DM you have absolute control over them, RAW be damned. You are inventing the situation, and can decide what the Perception penalties are based on how heavy you think the rain is. Ok, so if your boat is effectively 5' above the water with some railing added on, then your beastie can probably remain submerged and attack things on the edge of the deck. That should probably get the beastie concealment (from water), and the party cover (from railing). It can heave half its bulk out of the water and lose its concealment in order to negate the party's cover, and be able to reach farther onto the deck. (Again, assuming its large)
They run for x4 the normal duration. You don't use funky-beans math on multipliers when they apply to real world dimensions like time or distance. In this case, 2x2 = 4.
It's a specially tuned fork, designed for entry into your plane only. Any caster that regularly uses plane shift needs a fat pile of these darn things; one for each plane. When I said I use the tuning fork like a key, I meant that literally. Someone would need to get a copy of one of your forks, or spend some legend-lore action and research to make a reasonable copy. Just getting a copy of your planar focus could be an adventure all on its own. Remember to design your lair with the weakest stuff up front, and in encounter-sized parcels!
PS: The paizo site explodied on me this morning. Maybe some of that got on your original post. Sorry, mate!
Metamagic feats only stack if they say they do so specifically, however the Alchemist discovery doesn't reference the feat at all.
Also note that this does not qualify for the funky-beans doubling rule. In this case the duration would actually be four times longer.
What tool provides a bonus to UMD? I ask, because if it's a custom jobby, then you can probably also talk your DM into making a custom UMD boosting magic item. Maybe a harness that holds a wand, even.
Mathwei is right, but I think there are a few spells in there that aren't intuitive; meaning you get them earlier than the level you'd expect. It's all good, roll with it.
Doesn't plane shift require you to be familiar with the destination? You can pick a destination and arrive nowhere near it, but I don't see anything in there about needing teleport-grade intel. Just a forked metal rod attuned to the plane in question.
Agreed (though I'd clarify that you don't halve the cost of expensive material components)
Notice that create demiplane and plane shift have the same focus? A forked metal rod, attuned to the plane? I pretty much treat these like keys.
You are correct. It only says spells, so he does not need to save for channels, lay on hands, or the oracle's life link ability.
I would like to note that had you tried that in my game I totally would have let it happen, as it was a clever and funny solution to a problem. Frankly, swarms are enough of a pain in the arse that making an exception here is justified. So it's not RAW, but high fives for you and your DM.
If in doubt, assume they mean class level, not character level.
Take a look at the synthesist archetype, for your one-level dip.
I'm playing a summoner (class) and it is on my radar. I'm just not sure it's worth two feats. Spell Focus (Conjuration) does nothing other than act as a tax, and that just irritates me. I'll probably pick it up eventually, but it's not at the top of my list.
Players will break dungeons, it's what they are there to do. It's what the dungeons are for. Aside from that, you can make thematically themed dungeons that are made of unusual substances. Random magma tunnels behind the walls, extreme cold, walls covered in hardened alien slime, etc. Do this in moderation; do it to make things interesting, not just to shut down one player. However, the players will break these, too. It's what they're made for. Many of their solutions are loud or time consuming (stone shape has a pretty small volume). Let the monsters go to them, sometimes. Adamantine maul = dinner bell.
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