Alan Sinclair's page

How do I go about suspending my subscription for the rules so that I miss out the beginners box as this is not something that would interest me.

Cheers

Alan

Could you have a selection option on the Arms tab to include Combat Expertise in the AC calculation in much the same way you do with a shield?

Or is that just making things way too complicated?

And before I forget, cell DT17 on the Arms_DATA page only looks for the combat expertise flag in the first six weapons.

Is that intentional?

Kor

I have been looking at the Max Dex and Combat Expertise issue I reported above.

On the Arms_DATA tab, cells DT7 to DT12, where it is calculating the appropriate Max Dex bonus to apply, it checks armour worn and shield used, however I can find no reference made to the weight load value derived in cell F667 on the Stats_DATA page.

Regarding the spurious penalty, equal to the bonus you recieve from combat expertise, the problem appears to be in cell DT19 of the Arms_DATA page. I don't know why this cell is here (it's Friday afternoon and I have had a liquid lunch so the logic for its existence is beyond me at the moment), but there is an error here.

I have a hunch it should be

=cell_bonusesDATA_AC-DT17-DT16-DT15-Bonuses_DATA!G19

but I don't really follow what is going on.

Cheers

Alan

High Kor

My 1st level dwarven fighter has been playing around with the sheet.

When I load up to medium or heavy loads (after selecting the option to have items affect enc), although it applies the correct skill check penalties for the loads, it does not affect my Max Dex, allowing my +4 bonus to AC from an 18 Dex to still apply in both cases.

I cannot see the dwarven fighter favoured class bonus of +1 to CMD vs trip/bull rush applied to the sheet anywhere after I select it. Is this still to be done?

Finally, when selecting combat expertise, it adds the required dodge bonus AND a penalty to the AC calculation, leaving your AC no better off (and actually worsening your touch AC). CMD is being calculated correctly.

I'll try and have a look later on to see where the issues lie, but I thought I would flag these up for you.

Cheers

Alan

If I were not running the LoF AP, I would probably try to flesh out some kind of Jorune / Glorantha hybrid that has been sitting in my brain just itching to get out.

Pete

Same thing happened to my group in Legacy of Fire when the rogue muffed saving vs elemental fire damage and rolled a 1 for the necklace's fire save.

We all laughed, and then we pretended it did not happen (I allowed the use of a couple of hero points to make this so).

IMHO you did the right thing.

Everyone will talk about that moment for ages.

High Kor

Glad you are back.

I was playing about with the new sheet.

My third level Dwarven fighter was not being given the option to select a feat at third level. The only selection I was being offered was the favoured class bonus.

Maybe I am missing something?

Cheers

Alan

It's simple really.

I forget the film where I first heard this (I am thinking Romancing the Stone which is really scarey)

but

"Bad guys always have brothers".

Nuke the BBEG and someone very similar is going to want revenge. Bad.

I'm not sure if I am imagining this, but I dimly recall that there were items back in the day that allowed you to retrieve a scroll or a potion as a free action?

Can anyone help me with where I may find a reference to such items?

Cheers

Alan

Teamwork! My lot? You must be joking.

Thanks for the input. I now have a better handle on how things should pan out if they do the take-off-and-attempt-to-nuke-it-from-orbit routine.

I doubt very much they are going to hold on to it after an incident involving the rogue, said necklace and a failed save vs fire elemental flame attack ..... but you have to prepare just in case.

My party of pyromaniacs and mayhem makers have got their hands on a necklace of fireballs, and I just know that this will crop up.

So, the RAW seem (to me) to suggest that this tactic will not work.

It states that the spheres must be detatched by the user and thrown.

It also states that when the wearer of the necklace fails a save vs magic fire, the necklace must make a save (at +7) or explode.

So, what if you throw a full necklace at the BBEG?

I'm thinking of ruling that one sphere (the biggest) goes off as normal. Then the necklace needs to save (at +7 vs a 14).

Good idea. Bad idea?

Cheers

Alan

Character: TPK (technically)
Adventure: Howl of the Carrion King
Where: Entrance to crypt of Sarenrae
Catalyst: Necklace of Fire Balls and a naked flame

After having collected the necklace of fireballs, the party end up fighting the fire elementals at the entrance. The party rogue (wearing said item) botches a save vs the elemental's burn attack. He then botches the items save vs fire.

The rogue's player then works out that the whole party has to eat 29d6 of fire.

After laughing hard and long, the table allowed the rogue the use of a Hero Point to prevent him from burning in the first place.

The rogue quietly ditched the 'necklace of Suicide' whilst no one was looking before carrying on.

Unfortunately for the squishies, they only have an AC of 11 and a CMD of 12.

Seeing as the fight will almost certainly take place on a small island of rock floating on a deep lava pool, dragging the players to a firey doom seems almost inevitable.

Still, we have not yet had a death by lava in the group, so it will be unique.

Death by boiling bubble, we had quite a few of those years ago. Lava, not yet.

Thanks for clearing that up for me (don't know where I got the -15 from).

They won't keep the squishies out of harms way, they never do. What's a Dm to do? They will have to learn the hard way I suppose.

So a salamander's tail slap does does 2D6+1 plus 1D6 fire damage if it hits.

It MAY then attempt to establish a grapple as a free action because of the grab special ability (at -15 on the roll if it does not want the grappled condition).

Furthermore, it causes an additional 2D6+4 plus 1D6 fire damage WHEN it establishes a grapple because of the constrict ability.

Please, for the sake of my players, tell me I have got this wrong and explain to me how it does work.

I keep reading the passages in the Bestiary and come to this conclusion every time.

If I have not made an error, I take it the damage for the constrict ability is only ever applied when a grapple is established, and not every round.

Cheers

Alan

Of course, if you want it to be ALWAYS raining, just base it on Manchester!

Thanks for all the answers.

I think I understand the RAW situation now (loads of rolls) with a possible increased to the DC of the save after a failure.

However, I liked the doubling suggestion of kenmckinney, and shall be invoking Rule 0 to use that. It seems more straight forward to me.

Now I need to go and apologise to all my players for getting poison so badly wrong and applying the damage for each failed save. (No wonder they now fear giant vermin).

Thanks for the feedback, I think I shall check out Maptools.

Cheers

Alan

Talonne

The +2 adjustment you quote, is that a standard pathfinder adjustment to deal with multiple exposures to the same ability.

In other words, if am hit with 4 identical poison arrows, is it +6 to the save DC but only ever one application of damage, rather than save four times and apply damage for each failure?

I seem to have missed this reference in the rules.

Cheers

Alan

Does he have to make a save against the stench ability for each one? (And therefore does the DM have to keep track of which trogs he has saved against?)

OR

Does he save once, but against a higher DC? (Which is far more DM friendly)

I am hoping that somewhere I have missed something that makes the latter case valid.

Cheers

Alan

I have sitting on the wall, beside my game table, a 36" flat screen hooked up to my mac mini media server.

I can make quite reasonable battle maps using CC3 from profantasy (although printing them can be expensive).

Whilst clearing away the last session's figures, maps etc, I looked at the TV on my wall and though to myself there has to be something easier than this.

So, what software do people recommend I use for a VTT to support face to face play. The priority is displaying maps and moving characters about. Lighting and spells effects would be nice too.

I am not that much of a tech (it took me forever to get to grips with CC3), so in any replies, please assume I know nothing.

I have at home the mac mini and a PC with a reasonably fast wi-fi network.

I am planning on doing room by room mapping for House of the Beast.

I intend to use CC3 from profantasy to do this, all I have to do is learn how to use the damn software! I mean it can't be that hard.

Not as hard as the transition from XP/Office 2003 to Windows 7/Office 2010 right?

Thanks for sorting that out for me.

Cheers

Alan

OK

I am a little confused by the details of my subscriptions in my account.

It suggests that you are abount to ship the second installment of Carrion Crown, but not the first.

I may have grapsed the wrong end of the stick here.

Cheers

Alan

I am running Howl of the Carrion King with 6 in the party. They are an unoptimised bunch with little or no appreciation of game tactics.

We are using the hero point system from the APG.

They are killing the mooks (I am adding 50% more mooks to any encounter), but are being battered by the named monsters. Which is odd, as I thought they would have no problems due to the shift of the action economy in their favour.

I had intended to advance all named monsters, but I am afraid if I did that they would all be dead.

I have just wrapped up the Battlemarket from Howl of the Carrion King with 1" scale maps printed on a monstrous plotter (this thing literally can print wall sized maps). The only limit to this wondrous device is as you blow up the PDF the quality begins to drop.

It made running the boss fights so much fun (especially as PCs were tossed off the balcony back to the ground floor).

As an aside, these things are no use to me any more and take up far too much space (according to my wife). I paid nothing to print these (the plotter is an asset in the department where the party cleric works) and I would happily recycle them, although they have minor game damage (pizza and tea stains, as well as a corner having been nibbled by my infant son).

Unless doing this is a big no-no for some reason.

Cheers

Alan

Thanks Gary, doing as you suggested seems to have worked.

I now have an order, # 1590583, however it states you will not ship this until I have contacted you (for what I am not sure).

Can I take this thread as me contacting you?

Cheers

Alan

I am trying to subscribe to the Carrion Crown adventure path. As a non US subscriber your system is insisting I supply a telephone number, however, it keeps spitting out the number I give it.

What am I doing wrong?

Kor

Are you anywhere near getting a version of the Magus done?

If not I have done one for one of my players (who now wants to play a fighter - go figure?)

Anyway, if you want I could send it through.

Cheers

Kor

Is there any data monkey stuff that you need doing?

Cheers

Alan

Hello Kor

I do not think a small one-handed crossbow equals a hand crossbow by the RAW although the logic behind that train of thought isn't bad.

Having to take a feat to use a small one-handed crossbow in one hand IMHO is not necessary in this case. You will suffer a -2 to hit due to size penalty plus an additional -2 to hit from firing a light crossbow one handed. That is a -4 even before we look at TWF silliness.

I do not see any exploit here and I think it keeps the value of the Hand Crossbow EWP.

As for bows, I would take a rather harsh view and say, NO, a bow not sized for you cannot be used. I have absolutely no archery experience to back this assertion up (unless you include hopeless attempts to win teddybears for my wife at a fair).

I say this only because I am an old school GM of 30 odd years who is just mean that way and I doubt very much that the RAW would support me!

Anyway, just my tuppence.

Cheers

Alan

Kor

I have been playing with the sheet (with the include Enc option ticked). It calculates the speed and maximum run speed fine.

What I cannot get it to do is to apply the load penalties to skill checks and Max Dex for medium and heavy loads. What am I doing wrong?

I have also noticed that the Sacred Conduit trait is not adding 1 to the save DC of the Channel power.

Finally something came up about weapons (I could not really post without mentioning them could I?) Possibly more of a rules interpretation than a bug. Should a small warhammer become a light weapon for the purposes of two weapon fighting calculations? Paizo have kindly dropped one into the first Legacy of Fire adventure and working out how it works causes my player's brains to bleed. I think it should be considered light, but I may be getting the rules wrong (again)? Anyway, I could not work out a way of forcing a weapon to become light. Is there currently a way?

Cheers

Alan

Kor

Just to let you know I have been using this sheet for my Legacy of Fire Campaign and it is such a time saver. I cannot thank you enough for all the effort you have put in.

Something has come up that I did not notice at first.

Now that we are a few sessions in, the PCs have picked up lots of loot and a couple are now on Medium Encumberance (something we tend not to get during the creation process).

The ACP and Max Dex penalties for Medium (or Heavy) encumberance (from Table 7-5, p171 of the Core rules) are not figuring. I popped the bonnet of the sheet to see if it was a typo somewhere, but I cannot find any reference to them anywhere (perhaps my Excel Fu is not good enough).

I have created a simple work around using a tally of the Load values shown in cells E389 to E389 on the Stat_DATA page, a couple of new definitions and two tweaks elsewhere, but I thought I would not waste time posting it in case you have already put this in somewhere.

Cheers

Alan

Kor

I'm not sure if I have already pointed this out, but Detect Poison is missing from the o level lists in the Wizard's spell book section.

(Although I do wonder what it is doing in the list in the first place!)

Cheers

Alan

Kor

When the Sorcerer ability Elemental Ray prints out on page 2, it is shown as a Su when the book states it is a Sp.

Cheers

Alan

Kor

Should a touch attack be applying a damage penalty? (Damage bonus is not being applied).

I did not think it should, but then again I could well be wrong (It's not like that has not happened before).

Cheers

Alan

Kor

My half-orc fighter is now having a problem with the tally for the weight of his equipment.

If I just add equipment via the Items sheet my enc tallies correctly.

However, when I start adding weapons to the weapons columns on the arms sheet, it seems to be deducting the weight of the weapon from my total Enc?

(Adding armour or shields on this sheet does not effect my final enc).

The culprit for this anomaly seems to be cell FF24 on Arms_DATA tab.

I cannot work out why you have the 'Modified weapon weight' section of this sheet so I cannot offer a solution. Just thought I would flag this for your attention.

By the way, I really like what you have done with the new spells layout.

Cheers

Alan

Hi Kor

I had a half-orc fighter wearing chainmail have a -4 penalty applied to his acrobatics skill for jumping.

Going into the sheet I found the cell that was responsible, Skills_DATA2 BS7.

My understanding of the rules (and I accept that I may be wrong here) was that it was your BASE land speed that affected your jumping, not your land speed as modified by armour and load. If the latter was the case then you would suffer a double whammy of speed modifier and ACP, which seems a little harsh for me but YMMV.

If I am correct then I think all references to cell_statsDATA_LANDspeed in this cell should be changed to cell_bonusesDATA_LANDbase.

Cheers

Alan

Kor

I think I have found the bug concerning Armour proficiency (light)

Should cell AE112 on the Attributes DATA Tab have Armour proficiency light in it.

Kor

My first level sorcerer is being given the Armour (light) proficiency as a default and I cannot work out why?

Also, when you select touch attacks, rays or other types of weapon that have no damage listing it messes up the display on page 3(a).

Cheers

Alan

Kor

I was doing more messing around with a 1st level Wizard and have come up with a work around for the Hand of the Apprentice special ability.

It involved adding this ability to the list of Feats that can be applied to a weapon (list_armsDATA_feats on the Arms_DATA tab). I decided to have it display conditionally by putting the following into cell CR11 and redefining list_armsDATA_feats to include this cell

=IF(ISERROR(MATCH("Universal",cell_classesDATA2_wizardschool,0)),"","Hand of the Apprentice")

I then added two rows to Weapon 1 on the Arms_DATA tab, one in the Attack Modifier box beneath the dervish dance feat, and one in feats box below Rapid Reload.

I then entered in one of the new cells, P146,

=IF(ISERROR(MATCH("Hand of the Apprentice",O$105:O$107,0)),0,1)

and put this in another new cells, P135,

=IF(AND(P146=1,P6="melee"),cell_intmod,-99)

Finally I changed cell P129 to

=IF(P$4="","",MAX(P130,P131,P134,P135))

The seemed to add INT modifier to attack rolls at the appropriate time.

Alan

Kor

My first level wizard is not proficient with unarmed strikes, rays, and both kinds of touch attack. I thought all characters were proficient with these by default?

Adding them to cell Bg18 on the classes_DATA tab would solve this.

By the way the sheet has worked very well for my group, turning character creation into a breeze.

Cheers

Alan

Kor

My first level sorcerer having the third level bloodline bonus spells show up on his spell list and I cannot fathom why.

Cheers

Alan

Ok Kor

Here is another one for you. I was statting up a cleric and noticed that the spell DCs on the Spelllist tab were returning an error.

I looked into it and found the logic in cell M80 contained the following IF statement that I think was the reason an error value was being returned

+IF(K80=10,0,K80-n$64)

If I removed this from the cell it would calculate the save Dc as expected.

I could not work out what this bit of the logic was for?

Cheers

Alan

Kor

I grabbed another copy of the sheet straight from your website and it still has the bum reference on it.

Ninja'd

LOL

Kor

I am using excel2007.

I have found the issue.

When looking at cell G6 on the Items tab, using Data Validation, the source is listed as =INDIRECT(XAN6). If you change this to =INDIRECT(EF6) everything works fine.

This error is appearing all the cells in column G in this section.

Cheers

Alan

Ignore everything I said about bucklers! No shield bashing! The core rules have just been thrown at my player who wanted his ranger to bash with a buckler!

Kor

I have just noticed that the Buckler is missing from from the weapons data table on the weapons_DATA tab. You can select it on the arms tab, it just returns no data.

Cheers

Alan