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K... :(
So, we're in the middle of a game right now and we've encountered a group of enemies that are firing at us from arrow slits. I have improved point blank shot. The DM is ruling I can't shoot any enemies until I get within 5 feet of the slit because none of the four 'corners' of my character's occupied square can draw a LOS to the enemy. My only option to shoot them is to move within 5 feet of the slits and subsequently potentially provoke attacks from the other side (if they can melee or have natural weapons). My case was as follows (from Core, pg. 196):
Can't LoS be drawn from any point in a character to any other point? Otherwise larger creatures could have a lot of trouble hitting through cover. What's everyone's take on this situation?
I just happened to think about how 'daring' it would be to be a fully armored (adamantine full plate for the heck of it) gunslinger riding bareback on an untrained horse in combat. Every round you could be 'daring' by simply firing your gun while trying to stay mounted on your horse... XD ...granted, every 6 seconds or so you'll probably fall off and hurt yourself, but you'll have a lot more grit than that other gunslinger that actually *took* ranks in ride and used a saddle like a normal person! The idea behind Daring Acts is great, the current mechanics however, are not. A DC that is CL/HD based is probably best, with a limit re-earned per combat scenario / location / other standard of time to prevent abuse.
I do find it odd that this effectively means that higher level characters need to be more 'extreme' in order to earn grit back. That or they have to minimize the skill points they place into the skills they use most often to 'maximize' the chances of earning grit - albeit at the risk of taking damage or putting themselves in eminent danger. At least the two others means of obtaining grit are very simple to handle.
Just to get this thread a little bit back to the original topic...
Just to confirm, when firing black powder rifles with paper cartridges (using a horn easily increases this time 2 fold or more), I can get a shot off every 15-20 seconds in pristine weather & a on a solid surface (eg: I couldn't imagine reloading in combat while on a ship) with ~1.5 seconds of aiming. Very poor accuracy outside of ~3 meters. Older firearms predating flintlocks (a matchlock or wheel lock) would be even harder and take longer to reload and fire. I'd also like to note that if you're firing a black powder *anything*, after about a minute or two in little to no wind environments, you have very limited to no visibility or hearing. The weapons expunge a ridiculous amount of smoke and are very loud, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on the situation. I'd go as far as house-ruling the equivalent of a smoke bomb effect after a few shots in the same vicinity when inside enclosed areas. I don't know what I'd do for the deafening effect though... In terms of game mechanics for PFRPG, I feel that the rate of fire is fine. There is some suspension of disbelief required when it comes to the fire-rate, as if you fired any slower, guns would have absolutely no appeal to most players. Also, misfiring makes this that much riskier and does add some realism to it all. If people were to really nitpick about the gunslinger class's realism, there's all sorts of things that would take them out of a fight in a moment of combat in our world - any water effects (Aqueous Orb or even a little rain) would make all ammunition and weaponry useless unless it was stored in an air-tight or magical container. Assuming I didn't miss anything in the Playtest PDF, there are no rules regarding this - which is a good thing in terms of game mechanics. I wouldn't be against anything regarding firing while in water or fully submerged though... that's a bit too difficult to fathom. Maybe even introducing a type of 'water-proof' ammunition? This is Pathfinder after all. I guess the big question is how far guns in PFRPG have evolved. I'd like to think it's some combination of early Revolutionary Era weaponry with little odds and ends before and after this time. After all, I'd love to see a high CR 'boss' with some experimental Gatling gun of sorts guarding his fortifications - with a high fire and misfire rate of course. Considering Pathfinder is a world of magic, I'm glad they've already introduced the Reliable and Steadfast upgrades (although I personally believe Steadfast should be a +3 enhancement - at higher levels it's a must-have enhancement on a weapon in any prolonged combat, something I typically frown upon). Hm... looks like I've gone off on a few tangents of my own. Whoops.
If an interactive PDF of this was available for sale, I'd purchase this in a jiffy (assuming of course, a review or some samples were released showcasing the product). There's simply too many characters I have to justify purchasing one folio for each one. I have one big binder for all of my characters, with tabs to sort each of them. If I can double-sided print these to replace all of them, I'd love this product! Especially helpful for the games we have cohorts, animal companions, eidolons and the such to manage.
Solution for low strength? Guided weapon enhancement. Costs as a +1, but lets you use wisdom instead of strength for to hit and damage (it doesn't say melee only, but the "to hit" part suggests maybe it should - ask your GM to be sure).In the table above the entry it places Guided among enhancements for melee weapons, not ranged. House rule you might but it seems unmitigated cheese in this instance. Doesn't the table actually show the Guided enchancement as *both* a melee and ranged option? I'd figure it would work. Especially since you're getting half the effective bonus compared to its melee counterpart (which is still extremely useful at a range).
A friend of mine got an eReader for testing purposes at the University I go to and also DMs at a couple games. He was somewhat dissapointed in its performance (especially for the Paizo .pdfs - The Core rulebook and a few others are loaded with bookmarks and links which apparently make the device chug a ton) and the inability to quickly 'flip' to the book and page he needed, then over to another book. He claimed it was more or less a fancy but less efficient means of obtaining the information he needed when he needed it. He's since just used a laptop for everything, including the Adventure Paths. Multiple tabs for different PDFs, the ability to quickly copy-paste text whenever it's necessary, and at the same time refer to any online topics or site makes it a much better tool in the long run. Edit: I should probably note the eReader was an Amazon product. DigMarx: PSP = Playstation Portable
Yeah, no problem. If you have any other questions or comments about what I talked about, just ask. Also be sure to update with what you ended up doing. I'm curious to see what path you took. :)
Another note: mdt did add that the cohort could make a useful bard. The prestige class I mentioned works for a bard as well, especially many of their variants. This is of course, if you feel that this is a *ton* better than what you've already decided to do with your DM and works with the plot you've set for her currently (as a cleric). The Archivist, Detective, and Magician variants all fit if you'd like to go that route, especially the Magician. They have an arcane bonded item, also have bonus arcane spells (from Bard, Sorcerer, Summoner, Witch or Wizard lists), improved counterspelling, and more bonuses for their knowledge (arcana), spellcraft and UMD checks. With only 1 rank in UMD and an 18 charisma they'd have a minimum result of 22 at level 10, *without* the Skill focus feat, since they can take 10 regardless of the situation. That basically gives them the ability to use any magic item they want without failure. This same thing goes for spellcraft and knowledge(arcana) checks. If you had 10 ranks in any of these skills, the minimum take 10 would result in 31 or a 39 with skill focus. This is great for those tough craft checks. If you're trying to figure out the properties of something you 'could' even toss a swift identify in and you're looking at a 51-59 potential take 10 spellcraft check. It's overkill, since if you can't ID with a check like that at level 10, it's probably a greater artifact or an illusion, lol. It looks like they also get wand mastery (use your charisma bonus for DCs instead of wand's DC; the other ability wouldn't be obtainable unless you played to 16th level bard), which would make her the jack of all trades for all magical items - wands, scrolls and anything else she'd ever get her hands on. Getting Arcane Bond (the bonded item) at 5th level is perfect for the prestige class as well, since they can add magical attributes to the item as if they had the feats required for it. This effectively gives her a 'bonus' craft feat for her own personal use.
I would highly recommend looking into the Pathfinder Savant prestige class, if possible. The prestige class is intended for characters that are part of the Pathfinder Society, which could be a viable reason for why she wasn't always around before. Possibly studying the various magic items and artifacts the Society collected over the past decade or so, while learning to craft whatever items she's been tinkering with all these years. I really like this class for cohorts, since it's not primarily a combat focused class that can be used for any caster (Typically wizards, but clerics work fine as well, imo. The only problem is you miss out on channel energy at higher levels, but it's not that big a deal if she's not always with the party). The prestige class' ability to identify, cast their base class's magic in addition to 'wild card' magic (Esoteric Magic), and counterspell makes them a fairly useful handyman of sorts if needed in combat or healing/support. In regards to crafting, the cohort could be *very* useful in this as well, although at a -2 character level when compared to the rest of the party. This is moot, as they can *always* take 10 when using Knowledge(arcana), Spellcraft, and UMD checks (The former two only when not endangered/in combat, so ideally for crafting) in addition to getting half their class as a bonus to those checks. Plus, being able to use scrolls at her level, swift action identify items, activate magical items using UMD with ridiculous bonuses and spontaneously cast healing (from being a base cleric) or counterspelling would be a nice thing to have on the side board. Just an example, but in the campaign I played recently, my cohort (half-orc wizard pf savant) rarely accompanied us in our journeys until a large section that popped us in the Plane of Fire (most people should know which PF adventure path this is now :D ). He helped a little in many of our encounters, but was mostly useful in identifying items as we came across them, using analyze dweomer on the few encounters that had a lot of magic involved to find our opponent's weaknesses or at least their trump-cards, and most importantly, after finding an item that cast quench (a 3rd level druid spell that does damage to fire subtypes with NO save, counterspells fire spells and even 'deactivates' fire-based magical weapons/items), decided to take it upon himself to learn the spell for those tricky battles. It got us out of many pickles, to say the least. Take a look at the link above for all the details for the class and read the Seeker of Secrets book for a bit more content if you want her backstory to be similar to or related to the Society. Since Sarenrae is a good god, there shouldn't be anything really stopping her from being a cleric while taking the more 'scholarly' route that this prestige might somewhat imply. Otherwise, just work with whatever fits best to your campaign, hopefully with some input from your DM. Hopefully your DM allows the content on that site, as it's a great source of nearly *everything* Paizo has published rules-wise, aside from the Core Rulebook and the Advanced Players Guide.
First of all, Xavier and Gob have been reincarnated. Being a party of 3rd level characters, it's all that could be afforded. Gob is now a spell resistant dwarf and Xavier is a half-elf. So the player running Xavier hadn't really thought about a thorough background for the druid, aside from the fact he was captured somewhere along his journeys as a fascinating 'subject' on a slaver's ship which started our campaign. (The majority of us met while freeing ourselves from being enslaved.) He decided to create a bit of back-story in regards to his actual background - on the grounds he review a bit of the pathfinder campaign setting. He's fairly new to the Pathfinder setting, so I've let him borrow a couple books to see where he wants to focus his origins. The monk is currently in a perpetual state of gentle repose, and may be reincarnated if/when the player in control of that character returns from his own hiatus. Our GM has allowed us to modify our races and classes with any variants with permission. We also need to provide some evidence of our characters actually making sense with the new changes. (eg: No monks with extreme melee abilities suddenly becoming a Zen archer, only monks that at least show some interest in ranged weaponry.) Currently this hasn't changed anyone much. Gob has become a Hopitalier and Xavier may become a GM-approved variant. Our summoner also is a lot more on-par with the rest of us, now that he can't summon an earth elemental along with his already sick eidolon. Since the APG has released, our party has been looking at a lot of the different variants and we've been contemplating creating something for him that focuses on plant-based druid abilities. His luck when communicating with all animals continues to fail miserably, and he figured that using a modification of the animal shamans could make an interesting character - with the motive for doing what he does in addition to further explaining why he fails as a druid in respect to fauna in general. We took the time to do one quick encounter before returning to our 'base' of operations and ran into a feline creature (which apparently appears in Kingmaker) that we had to knock out. The thing nearly succeeded in killing Xavier (as he currently has two permanent negative levels from the reincarnation). On the bright side, he never had the chance to even use Wild Empathy this time...
We went on a two week hiatus due to a few of us taking vacation breaks during the summer. :) I'll update it by Wednesday, as we plan on meeting tomorrow evening. I wasn't intially going to update since it seemed that nobody was *that* interested in the topic, but I'll do it for you, Jester. :D
I posted another topic that does everything *but* talk about this character's actual physical appearance: Xavier Muldoon, Druid Failure Extraordinaire Drawings are good for anyone wanting to play with an open palette at the moment. Once I talk with the actual player running Xavier, I'll update with his description accordingly.
So, this is a combination of a couple topics, all of which don't really 'fit' into anything on the Community Boards. It's a bit about our campaign, but mostly about a particular character in our party that all of us get a huge kick out of. It's also to give some people who 'may' accept a drawing request a bit of insight on the character. ~~~~~
This story revolves around a not-so intelligent level 3 human druid, Xavier Muldoon. The rest of his party and his animal companion velociraptor, Clever Girl, have come across many sticky situations. This is typically due to Xaviar turning normal, casual sights into near-death encounters.
The best example of this was one of our party's first encounters. While on horseback, we were attacked by a few Grigs protecting treasure they mistakenly thought we were after. One cast entangle and all the horses we were riding succeeded in saving and walked out on the following round - except for Xavier's. Not knowing what cursed the ground before him, he promptly retaliated with an Entangle spell of his own. *6* rounds later we had dealt with all but one of the grigs and Xavier was still failing to get his horse to move from the same spot. The following round an infuriated Xavier hopped from his horse only to be entangled himself. When the horse's turn came, it freed itself from the entangle and ran away from the battle. Over a minute passed before Xavier was able to finally escape the entangle, long after the fight had ended. By then we had chased down his horse and brought it back.
At first level we came across a few dolphins that were caught in some nets and he attempted to wild empathy them after freeing them. He failed, resulting in a few dolphins taking him out with a couple lucky crits (unbelieveable, but true; 20-some damage in a couple rounds). Fortunately, we were in fairly shallow water and able to pull his bleeding, unconcious body to safety. Several days later we encountered some river elk (6 of 'em) near another town's port and he figured it'd be neat to wild empathy them (We had a few things to do further inland and any help we could get would have been useful). He rolls a natural 1. Moments later we see him screaming in horror as 6 elk trample him to a bloody pulp. An unnecessary bloodbath later (everyone lived, but we still had to KO all of the elk), we revived him from his near death state. At our destination, we came across a bear that had been injured by a trap. "I got this guys." - One minute later we had another combat on our hands. He went down the first round. I think we had to kill the bear. Pretty much, this has happened throughout our campaign. Averaging once every three to four sessions - A couple constrictors, a giant frog, giant crab, a young orca, shocker lizards, the list goes on. Until this last encounter, which oddly enough wasn't his fault for the most part.
Xavier's last words: "That looks dangerous." The paladin, believing that anything 'dangerous' should be dealt with or destroyed before the nearby clerics reinhabit the island, turned the cart to engage the monster. Having also failed his Knowledge(nature) check, all Xavier knew was it was a plant-like creature of fairly large proportions. Engaging it like any other creature, we soon found that it was a tad beyond our expectations when it immediately attacked and crushed our monk to death in the first two rounds of battle. With our Rogue/Wizard using a recently aquired Lightning Bolt wand on it and the (not so) well versed Xavier using Flaming Sphere on it a couple times our damage dealers weren't exactly contributing towards defeating the shambler (It gains 1d4 Con at 9HD when struck by Lightning damage and has DR 10 vs fire). A dozen rounds later, our Monk, Paladin, Druid (Xavier), and his raptor lay dead, all constricted to death within moments of coming in contact with the beast. All that remained was our Rogue/Wizard and Summoner, who managed to whittle the creature to death with a magic missle wand.
Our level 3 party is as follows:
Xavier's stats are:
I might also add that another running gag for our party is a dump stat in INT. It just so happens that our Monk, Paladin and Druid (all of whom just died) also share a 7 intelligence. We're not the brightest bunch of adventures. The Summoner's Eidolon is even on par with these characters, tipping the scales to make the party's combined median *and* modal INT a whopping 7. The next time we meet, I'll have to take another gander at Xavier's background/description and update it in here accordingly. :)
Why hello there, Stan here. Jeff. Whatever. I'll be glad to attend the 8am session... for GLORY! (And a bit of wine, no thanks on the roses) I'm thinking of either making a ranger or fighter for the event, with a dash of prestige class, if that's alright. Still contemplating race and a bit of backstory. Regarding the actual stats, I'll be able to send them your way within 48 hours. I've got a few things to attend to at the moment, but will squeeze time to make create him whenever I can. :) |