Armour's page

Got to love the "Large and in Charge" feat from Sword and Fist (3e book). If you're large, get a free trip attempt whenever you deal 15 or more damage. Combo with a large spiked chain and combat reflexes... Trip-lock EVERYONE in the room.

Ah, good times.

My group has always presumed the player has control of the Eidolon.

I played a tiefling summoner, who was saved from a cult as a child, and had a Leonal guardinal soul-bound to me to force me to take the path of Good. I had fun trying to play my character as always tempted by Evil, while the Eidolon was my conscience... admittedly, one who could physically beat me if I stepped out of line.

The biggest problem with it is managing the two personalities in my head. Having conversations with yourself is a valuable GM-skill, and one I'm still developing.

I would say my best concept I've had was for a large scale/economic game which I joined late. The other characters were all Lawful Evil, building towns and businesses. I decided to get into the arms manufacturing biz.

The character was a warforged wizard, but stayed under illusions to make people think he was human. He was Chaotic Good, and treated all his workers extremely well. He exported high-grade, extremely powerful defensive weapons, and sold them to EVERYONE. This meant the coming war (which the campaign was ramping up to) would be difficult to win by any side as every city would be armed with anti-siege weaponry.

Slavery was a major part of the setting (for the evil empires) and my character was secretly working against it. Every night (warforged don't have to sleep) he would drop his illusion, load up on spells, and go destroy slavers, setting free the slaves or hiring them himself.

I was describing the character to a friend, and he said "Dude... you're Tony Stark."

I hadn't even realised it. But that is how I played it. it was amazing.

Even though the DM was incredibly pissed off when I started ripping down her slave economy piece by piece.

Is there a list of fan-built alternate monk designs, preferably without having to sift though pages of rage? I'm wanting to build a few monk NPCs for my game.

Running into a swarm of flying alien leeches, naked, trying to catch one in a glass jar. The rest of the party shot at the swarms with the ship-mounted weapons. Which they weren't proficient with. I was naked because the leeches also produced acid which dissolved equipment.

Edit: It is perhaps worth mentioning that I had fur, being genetically engineered for a cold planet... Ahh, d20 Future.

Well, there is a reason that 91% of the non-Christian US public associate the church primarily as "antihomosexual". In other words, hate-based. Good job, US church.

Statistic gained from here; "How to win a culture war and lose a generation". The article is excellent in total and deserves a read.

Speaking as a non-american agnostic, I feel disappointed that this sort of crap still exists, and wonder why anyone who calls themselves christian can see this withotu publically decrying it.

Depends on whether you only want 1HD playable races or any monstrous humanoid.

Playable races:
Kenku
Kitsune
Samsaran

Monstrous Humanoids:
Gnolls
Lizardmen
Troglodytes
Degenerate yuan-ti (if you are using old DnD monsters)

And a fair selection from here: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/indexes-and-tables/monsters-by-type#type-m onstrous-humanoid

Thanks for the advice, all. Gotten quite a few ideas, and plan to switch up my design a bit. Also I'm trying to plan in character development points already, so will talk to the Fighter and try to make him have plans beyond killing all the things.

As for the Ranger, I'm going to have to make a plan with him. One possibility is for him to multiclass into Wolf Totem druid; it fits his story, and may work well.

First off, let me say that this is NOT a balance inquiry. Casters vs Fighter is a long, frequent, and boring topic, and not the answer I'm looking for.

My new campaign is going well, but I have some concerns about the fighter in the party. He completely outshines everyone else in combat, doing twice to three times as much damage. The rest of the party feels slightly neutered by this. While not in combat, though, he doesn't do anything, as he has no useful skills.

The PCs are 6th level, and are 20-point build. Party consists of 2-weapon Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Shapeshifter Ranger. The Ranger has hit a sort of dead end with his build; natural weapons don't scale well, and he lost his third one (he started as a half-orc with the Toothy trait, but a death and a Reincarnation later...). The Cleric is a new player, and so doesn't know how to trick out his spellcasting; I can't offer him advice, never having played one. The Wizard is just a Wizard.

My questions are, is this normal? Should I be throwing monsters with higher/lower AC at the party? Will the obscenely different damage potentials shrink with growing levels, or increase? I want to take the campaign to high levels; 17-18 at least being my goal. I wonder if at that level, the Fighter will be constantly frustrated, though, as combats become less frequent and campaign-straddling things are accomplished via roleplaying encounters.

I've had a couple that really stand out.

In Faerun 3.5e, I was playing in an orc-themed game, as a druid, and by far the weakest party member (casting as a 3.5 orc? Not optimal). Leucrottas attacked, and it was brutal. Everyone else went down, but my magic dropped all but one of the leucrottas.. and that one fled, climbing down a cliff. Feeling the bloodlust, I lept off the cliff after it. hit on the way down, critted, dropped it.. and hit the ground, taking me to 3HP. Okay, so I was the party healer, and dying might have meant a TPK. Totally worth it, though.

Dark Heresy produces some epic crits. Best had to be on a daemonhost though, which manifested twice in one session, and was taken down the next round both times. First with an autogun burst for 72 damage. Then with a anti-tank grenade to the face for 54 damage.

Good times.

To expand the question further, what happens when any source grants a weapon an enhancement bonus which stacks with whatever the weapon already has, like A Paladin's bonded weapon or a Magus using his Arcane Pool to grant his weapon an enhancement?

Does the spell Magic Weapon (and Greater MW) give a weapon temporary hit points? The spells by RAW simply give a enhancement bonus, and the weapon hardness and HP table states that weapons get bonuses to those stats if it has an enhancement bonus.

It isn't clear if a spell will give the bonus hardness and HP though, as its a temporary effect.

As a secondary question, does a weapon or armour with other special properties get the extra hardness and HP, even though it isn't directly a enhancement bonus? Example: a +1 flaming longsword getting bonus hardness and HP equal to a +2 weapon. If not, it continues the trend that straight-up + enhancement weapons are better than anything else, which is a bit boring when it comes to flavour.

Funnily enough, I've used a few "black metal" objects in my games, inspired out of a 3PP list of mundane loot somewhere. They are always completely magically immune and count as adamantine, but are not exactly. The parties have never gotten high enough level to find out, but they are really relics of alternate realities, random tools or objects that seem magical.

its really great to read a thread like this, just to see the breadth of the community, and some staff members! Now if only those rumoured non-hetero Pathfinder Iconics would step out of their closets... (Just kidding, lets not start an argument over that. Though I think Harsk is totally one of them.)

I discovered both my sexuality (gay) and gaming when I got to university. Luckily my university gaming society was always great, and it was never an issue. I've never really had flak for it, though I am totally "straight-seeming" without really intending to be. I wonder about it sometimes, but I continue to struggle who I want to be.

Oddly though, I never played gay characters until I joined an online IRC gaming group that included some adult roleplaying, and encouraged building your "perfect" character. Suddenly, it was like a second lightbulb went off in my head. Firstly, that playing a gay character allowed to get into their head a lot more (who'da thought?), which was great. The other thing that roleplaying the character allowed me to be was to take charge of being really big physically. I'm tall and broadly built, but sometimes felt uncomfortable with it. I've come to realise it has great points though, like being able to defend myself from my demons, imagined as they might be.

I haven't had many experiences in playing IRL with LBGT gamers though. Two examples stick out, though. The first was a gay ST for Mage:TA who had some gay NPCs in his game, and it always struck me how empty their characters were; they sexuality defined them completely. I prefer characters with depth; after all my sexuality defines me only in part, anyone so one-dimensional just feels fake. (Though that ST turned out to be a horrible person, who stole my boyfriend. Happily in the past now.) The second example was a guy I played with for a short while, who never came out, exactly, but was incredibly obviously gay. He played a female character, and flaunted it constantly. The weirdest thing was how none of us would have cared, but he didn't ever admit anything, which made it a little awkward.

I would have to say the worst paladin story I have is about the DM being bad.

DM tells us to make Good heroes, and the campaign is post-apocalyptic. I and a friend make paladins. Campaign starts, and the first major encounter we have is with a group of strange, material plane demons from another reality. They state that they hate the gods, because they were persecuted in their reality. That sucks, we reply, but our gods are good. We're paladins, after all. The demons get irate and insist gods are evil inherently. We tell them they are not; and though we think they can find the protection and respect they want, they should try worshipping ours.

They respond to this by announcing they will never worship gods, and they and their children will go forth and kill all believers in gods, to disrupt prayer and weaken the gods themselves, once they have rebuilt, and nothing will ever change their minds; it was bred into them, to the bone. Us paladins didn't take kindly to this, and decided all we could do (regretfully) was to kill them all right there. There was a defenceless settlement nearby, they would have been the first to fall. So we began the cleansing, killing every demon and whelpling.

At which point, the DM broke down into arguments about how the demons were only neutral. He couldn't see how a pair of paladins would have a problem with a race who were biologically programmed to kill the gods.

Needless to say, the campaign ended there, after two sessions.

What? No Kobold love?

I'd like to see one of the "spotlights" be on my favourite little scaled bastards, but I realize that they aren't widely popular. More is the pity. With their mining aptitude, average intelligence, and mad belief in their manifest tiny draconic destiny, they should do better than being relegated to 1st level adventurer fodder.

I don't know why there aren't more fans of cutebolds.

Firstly, I have to say that I love catfolk, but always found them unplayable in 3.5 because my group considered them well overpowered for their +1 LA. I approve of fixing them for PF.

+1 Dodge Bonus to Armor Class: Catfolk possess an amazing sense of timing, and have incredible reflexes. In combat they are able to designate any one foe as a free action as a target of this dodge bonus. A catfolk who has the dodge feat can actually designate two different targets for his dodge bonuses, one from the feat, the other from his racial ability, or he can combine them against the same opponent. As this is a dodge bonus, it stacks with other dodge bonuses, unlike most other bonuses.

I just notice that since the pathfinder Dodge feat gives a flat +1 dodge bonus to AC all the time, this is an unnecessary reversion to the old complicated rule. Maybe just make it another +1 AC, although that could be slightly too powerful.

All this running around the field of battle and the average warrior is expected to face it for 3sp a day. Desertion rates must be insane ;) or punishment for deserters is even more draconian and horrific than our own world ever thought of.

You're forgetting something.. With all these horrors, kingdoms would prefer to stay peaceful, in case their enemies "go nuclear" and make pacts with some sort of Big Nasty (or Big Good, if its an evil nation attacking. Karma exists, and Celestials can step in too.).

Also, that old saying.. soldiering is mostly occupied by long periods of boredom, punctuated by short periods of terror. 3sp a day adds up quick in a world where they would otherwise be earning 1sp a day, if they could find work. Plus, in the army their equipment and upkeep is paid for, allowing them to send money home to their families.

The Black Company series by Glen Cook is a good example of warfare in a fantasy setting. Link to wikipedia entry. The series follows a mercenary company in a fantasy world; the twist is that their main employer is the evil overlord.

In these books, magic-users are very rare, but still have a major impact on battles. Illusions are cast to fool and demoralise enemies, shields protect from arrow fire, winds are used to blow up dust or smoke. Shapeshifters stalk enemies in the night, causing serious morale issues in encampments.

Fireballs and such do exist, but are strenuous. This is mirrored in DnD rules, casters can't just keep going. Their best powers are kept in reserve until a really prime target presents itself; compare this to use of squad anti-tank weapons in modern warfare. Any sort of mage is indeed a prime target, and even high-level ones can be taken down by enough concentrated force. Low-level casters can counter high-level ones' defences with spells like See Invisible and Dispel, leaving them open to attacks by mundane weaponry.

Earthworks are a more common defence line than castle walls. They are cheaper, much easier and faster to construct, and from a gaming mechanics point of view, harder to actually effect. Moving a 20' high earthen rampart is harder than putting a hole in a solid stone wall, just because there is so much thicker.

Consider: a fireball covers 44 squares, but if a commander knows this, he will make his troops use skirmisher formations, causing a far lower loss of life. In addition, if we presume that both sides have casters, Dispel Magic is available, and should actually be more common than Fireball, as both divine and arcane casters get it.

Personally I think that the higher level the mage, the less likely they are to get involved in battles. They know how dangerous it is, and the gains are probably not personally worth it (unless they are paid obscene amounts of gold). There are of course exceptions, like Paladin-styled clerics, or court mages of kingdoms. I however think high mages have more important things to do with their time in fantasy settings, like closing demon gates, fighting corrupted dark mages, that sort of thing.

Perhaps it means that while the brewer defined the effect (caster level, and any other decisions made about the spell, eg; Cold or Hot fire shield) the drinker is counted as the "controller" of the spell effect while it is active.

I'm not sure what this would affect in gameplay though, as you cannot choose to end a potion effect on yourself.

The 1d4 system is what is used in d20 modern for grenades, as long as you hit the square. Miss it and the d8s and d12s come into play...

However, it is one of the few rules in d20m that I was excited about, and I have no idea why I didn't think of it for 3.5.

As far as I know (and our group, at least, we always play it thus) Claws are natural weapons, and Monk's attacks are Improved Unarmed attacks. They are different.

So, you can't flurry with the claws, as they aren't your special hands, or special monk weapons. A DM might let you train to specially use your claws as monk weapons, but that is a very easily breakable rule. Similarly your Unarmed Attacks shouldn't get the extra fire damage if you get it with enough Sorc levels.

Also your claws won't go up in damage with your Monk levels, only with your Sorcerer ones.

When I started playing DnD, the very first game the DM ran was City of the Spider Queen. Only one of the group had ever played DnD before, but the DM was very experienced.

Spoilers for those who want to go into the dungeon as unsupectingly as we did.

The single best quote, which was in no way preplanned:
Cleric, to the barbarian: "So why do you do what you do?"
Barbarian: "Uhh.. I just kill for the experience."