So, I've been looking at the Combat Advice feat, and it's really good for making use of that Move Action I don't always spend.
I was wondering if there were options like it for boosting the party with the bits of my turn I don't use.
For standard actions, there's the Aid Another action, which can grant +2 bonus to attack. Not as good as just making your own attack in most cases, but it's an option for those times when your attack's damage is less valuable than another striker's attack (they can bypass damage reduction and you can't, or they're casting an important dodge-or-die touch spell).
For move actions, there's Combat Advice which grants +2 circumstance bonus to attack. Great for when the party doesn't have a bard. Doesn't cost any resources and can be done on a turn in which you attack or cast a spell.
Are there any swift options?
Are there any other boosts that can be granted instead of +2 to attack/AC without diving into a specific class?
Blind Eye of Heaven
Abjuration
Personal
Casting Time 1 round
Duration 10 minute + 1 round or until discharged
You are temporarily cut off from any of your deities, orders, and vows. You may not use any abilities or benefit from any features associated with a divine spellcasting class or any class whose abilities are taken away upon breaching an oath or vow. Any actions you take while casting this spell and while under the effects of this spell will not incur an alignment shift and cannot be witnessed by divination effects from good creatures. Further, any pact, vow, or moral obligation that would be affected by your actions are considered otherwise kept, unless another creature bears witness. When the spell ends, any abilities or benefits from class features suppressed by this spell are returned unless otherwise revoked.
You may choose to end the spell early. If you do, roll a Will save or be subjected to Memory Lapse as the spell except that you forget the events of the entire duration of the spell. You cannot take an automatic failure on this roll.
This spell is not on the Paladin's spell list until the Paladin witnesses another spellcaster under its effects. Once witnessed, the Paladin learns everything about the spell and can cast it spontaneously in place of a spell of the same level. After casting this spell, permanently remove it from your Known spells list. The Paladin can only cast this spell once in their lifetime. Reincarnation, resurrection, and magic items do not grant additional castings. Learning this spell intentionally can be considered a breach of the oath with the Paladin's deity and should be done with utmost secrecy.
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So, why this spell? I was considering adding moral temptations to a future campaign and I thought I start with Paladin, as the obvious beacon of LG. The idea behind this spell is that a Paladin player may find themselves in a position where they witness a falling paladin under the effects of the spell and then the spell instantly becomes an "option" to the player.
They get one freebie. One chance to be as bad as they possibly could be. Think of it like a The Purge moment. This will test their faith quite well. On one side, it looks like a low-risk high-reward button. On the other, they're actually faced with a high-risk scenario. After utilizing the spell, they're likely to have been noticed by their party doing something bad. If confronted or if the witness prays to their god, the shows over. You've been caught. Worse yet is that the paladin will not be able to lie about the events that transpire if they remember them.
Considered another way, this allows a Paladin to use an evil means to a good end. One that would normally be unavailable to them. Such as pulling the lever at a railway fork to kill one person instead of five, lying to and deceiving the big-bad, or utilizing necromancy in a way that desecrates a dead body.
Is including such a spell a bad idea? Is going about baiting these types of moral quandaries from players too much?
Under oversized weapon rules, a Huge Aklys can be wielded by a medium creature as a two-handed weapon. However, given that it's two tiers above the appropriate size for the creature, that gives it a -4 penalty.
On top of that, there's very few races and classes proficient in this exotic weapon (if any at all), so the wielder likely incurs another -4 penalty to hit with it.
To mitigate the -8 penalty to use, a character would need at least the following:
A Bard and an Archaeologist walk into a bar. The Bard's waving a Flag while his buddy is recruiting two other members for an adventure.
Who should they invite if they want to maximize the benefit of a Bard and Archaeologist while still having a pretty balanced party?
As of right now, there are three effects guaranteed to see play. The Bard will be singing and waving a flag, so that's +1 competence to attack and damage, and +1 morale to attack and damage. The Archaeologist will most likely be Fate's Favored for +2 luck to attack and damage. With the Archaeologist as a primary striker/hammer and the Bard being the off-striker or back-row controller, the party is already dishing out some big hits at high accuracy early on.
A wizard wouldn't actually be a waste due to bringing Ray of Frost to the party and dealing 1d3+3 (bard, flag, focus) at touch early on and Scorching Ray later on, while also bringing the power of a wizard's varied Conflict Resolution Textbook (spellbook).
Still, it seems like with a Bard and an Archaeologist on the roster, this party is already skewed into glass cannonry. Adding even more squish seems rather haphazard and irresponsible.
Let's say that a player has an overwhelming evil aura and recalls that there was a forest in which a village of pixies all had constant Detect Evil, at all times. He then decides it would be easy money to go into the woods and just collect stunned pixies by walking up to them and tying them up.
He is far higher level than twice that of any of other pixies. So, they should all be stunned as soon as they see him, right? Is there anything the pixies can do to avoid being permanently stunned while he collects them?
Let's say that you cast an illusion spell and a creature interacts with it and succeeds their save. In this case, it's quite obvious if the creature succeeds their save because they'll walk through illusory walls, walk over not-actually-broken bridges, or ignore Optimus Prime's ranged attacks.
These cases I'm not concerned with. However, cases such as enchantment are less obvious. Let's say that you were to give someone a Suggestion. This lasts for a minimum of 3 hours (corruption subdomain). That's a fairly large amount of minimum time during which someone would be considering that Suggestion. They could do it immediately or they could take all 3 hours to do what you've "expertly recommended".
During those 3 hours, you're not necessarily aware if it worked. The target could have saved against the spell, been aware that you used the spell Suggestion, and been acting in a way that doesn't necessarily dismiss the possibility that they're suggested.
Are there any feats, spells, traits, class features, magic items, etc. that allow you to know with certainty when a creature fails a save?
These massive pauldrons take the shape of a pair of clenched fists made of beaten bronze. They bestow a +4 bonus on CMD, and grant the wearer the ferocity ability. On command, the wearer can increase its size, as though subject to an enlarge person spell, and can revert to regular size with another command. Three times per day, as an immediate action after the pauldrons’ wearer kills an opponent, the wearer gains the benefit of the deadly juggernaut spell for 1 minute.
The language here seems to imply that this effect is not optional.
It is not written as follows:
Quote:
Three times per day, as an immediate action after the pauldrons' wearer kills an opponent, the wearer may gain the benefits of the deadly juggernaut spell for 1 minute.
Not only that, but the trigger activation is potentially prohibitive. If the wearer kills any meaningless mooks earlier in the day for which Deadly Juggernaut would not apply due to its HD restriction. Effectively, wasting a charge in a situation in which they would not benefit.
A separate question regarding the effect:
Does activating the effect from killing an enemy count as having killed one enemy during the effect?
The wording "after" seems to indicate that the death will not count, but there seems to be a huge difference between RAI and RAW with this item already. It would seem rather underpowered if the mandatory effect would activate after any kill and, even when the kill meets the HD restriction, not count towards the accumulated bonus.
It becomes further underpowered when you consider that this requires at least two kills to even benefit from the effect, which likely amounts to two turns and one less swift action on the first turn. By the third turn when you're benefiting from the bonus, you're likely not going to need it anymore because combat is either over or decided without the +1 and 2/- DR needing to be considered.
The only real benefits from this item would be the At-Will enlargement and ferocity, which doesn't truly warrant a 40k price point by itself.
I'm trying to design a series of tables of Hard encounters (APL+2) for each level. However, I've already hit a brick wall in the playtesting of some of the encounters I've already made.
Some of you may have seen my questions about encounter design before, involving positioning having a non-negligible impact on an encounter.
Further, the combinations of what goes into an encounter tend to be so drastically unwieldy compared to the individual enemies by themselves.
For example, let's consider one of the Level 1 encounters I threw together for testing:
Player Party of Level 1s consisted of Wizard, Fighter, Archer, Cleric
Below is the play-by-play of how devastating the encounter was. I honestly can't say what the players could have done better.
Spoiler:
In testing, the Acolyte used Touch of Law on the Gladiator and the Gladiator charged and one-shot the party Cleric with only having needed to roll damage. Cleric bled out eventually. The party had a longspear fighter braced against the barbarian, but he missed. He then proceeded to miss on his next turn with his spear.
Since the fighter was now in melee with the Gladiator, the party archer couldn't reliably hit the biggest threat with the penalty for combatants in melee, so he aimed for the Acolyte. It was then that we noticed the Acolyte had 17 AC. The Archer missed.
The enemy bandit didn't actually contribute much. It held its turn until after the cleric, received a touch of law, but still couldn't hit on a 11+4 against anyone in the party. After this, the bandit just tried relentlessly to drop arrows from afar, to no success.
But before that, the party Wizard had a to inhibit the Barbarian. Had Grease and Color Spray prepared. Barbarian was still Touch of Law'd and would automatically succeed the will save without rolling. With a range of 25 ft., he couldn't target the Acolyte and the Bandit. Wizard actually forwent Grease because the Gladiator only needed to beat a DC 14 Reflex and that meant a 35% chance to do nothing and it was unlikely the barbarian could be tricked into walking through the same square a second time if it failed the first. Wizard used crossbow to hit Bandit, except didn't hit the Bandit. We then realized that the Bandit also had 17 AC. Wizard did not contribute anything that turn.
Wizard had backed up out of the Gladiator's reach ending well-behind the fighter, forcing the Barbarian to charge through the Fighter's threatened squares to reach him. The fighter backed up and braced against the Gladiator, ending right in front of the Wizard. Gladiator moved up to next to the fighter instead of charging, proc'ing AoOs which it ignored and CLEAVED. The Wizard went down instantly. The fighter was brutally injured.
The Archer then focused on damaging the Gladiator while inching closer to the enemy group. Managing to land the first damage against the Gladiator all game.
The Bandit shot an inconsequential arrow.
The Acolyte moved in to try and Touch of Law the Gladiator again, but was too far. Instead, charges at the fighter. The fighter manages to take down the Cleric with a non-brace AoO.
Fighter steps back to attack the Gladiator and manages to hit. Deals max damage to the Gladiator, a whopping 14.
It was around here that the Cleric bled out, but I forgot exactly where in the turn order they were, given that they never got a turn.
Gladiator ices the Fighter with a Power Attack.
Party archer keeps back-peddling and shooting until the Barbarian lands a final blow.
Bandit does nothing important but becomes the only survivor. Acolyte bled out. Gladiator's rage ended and they bled out. None of the party managed to stabilize. That inconsequential bandit got all the loot and is living it up somewhere in Absalom.
Clearly, I need to be more careful when constructing synergy for my encounters, pushing a CR+2 to CR+2+. Looking at the raw numbers and the flow of battle, there was absolutely nothing my players could have done without knowing exactly what each unit had at their disposal. Even when recognizing Touch of Law, they were incapable of doing anything at level 1 against this group.
It's what me and a few friends are using as our new benchmark encounter for Level 1 players. We've put playtesting on pause until we can figure if there's a reasonable expectation that a newly-formed group should have the ability to defeat these guys. Clearly, the Classical Group failed spectacularly.
I'd like some better guidelines for encounter designing. There's this huge leap between what I see available and what I'm looking for. I want to design fair encounters but I want the players to feel like their choices matter.
If a player chose to cast Sleep on a group of goblins and another player decided to start coup de gracing them during combat instead of dealing with other more pressing foes, I want that to be a point of failure in the strategy of the party that will naturally be exploited by the encounter. They should be on the ball, rolling with the punches, and pushing for victory, each and every time.
However, this is going to be a table, designed for posing such a threat to nearly every group that faces it (barring overly optimized murderhobos). I can't design these encounters on the fly to aptly push these buttons against the party. Generally At-APL encounters are definitely possible on the fly, but with APL+2 (the Pathfinder "Hard"), I risk wiping the group with an unfair encounter.
The goal is to eventually run a Hard Mode Campaign where XP will only be granted for quality RP and life-threatening battles and anything else you'd see in an action movie from the 80's and later.
There's been some iffy readings of the base rules for starting combat amongst one of my groups.
When combat starts, there's a surprise round if not everyone is aware that combat has started.
During that round, actors who are aware can only make half-actions (standard or move, but not both).
Now, let's say we have the Rogue in Invisibility. He runs up to a guy, waits for him to stop moving, and then unleashes a full attack of at least five attacks. The question now is 'does he'?
One interpretation is that the Rogue is initiating combat, so he acts first in the surprise round. So, he's not allowed to make a full attack. Even worse so, the move action spent to get next to the target was their action during the surprise round. He rolls initiative and has a chance to go immediately after (given his astronomical stealth). He gets to do a full attack when his turn starts.
The second interpretation is that as soon as the first attack hits, combat starts. So whatever they were doing is interrupted because it wasn't a combat action, so it wasn't even a "full-round" action. He rolls initiative and has a chance to go immediately after (given his astronomical stealth). If everyone's aware, instead he gets to do the full attack.
The third interpretation is that he gets to finish making his full attack and THEN the surprise round happens. He rolls initiative and has a chance to go immediately after (given his astronomical stealth). If everyone's aware, instead he gets to do another full attack right after the first one.
In the first case, the rogue must initiate combat before unleashing a full attack. It's in their best interest to spend their surprise round getting next to their target who may move away in the proceeding round. They may miss the perfect opportunity as a result.
In the second case, the rogue must allow the enemies a chance to respond (by detecting that combat has begun since the rogue's first attack), but then immediately the rogue is visible and has dealt only one of many attacks. Generally, popping the invisibility during the combat during a full attack would have been a better use of their invisibility.
In the third case, it's a more than perfect world for the rogue. The rogue gets a free five hits from the full attack and then gets to do it immediately after in a likely case.
A barbarian can call upon inner reserves of strength and ferocity, granting her additional combat prowess. Starting at 1st level, a barbarian can rage for a number of rounds per day equal to 4 + her Constitution modifier. At each level after 1st, she can rage for 2 additional rounds. Temporary increases to Constitution, such as those gained from rage and spells like bear's endurance, do not increase the total number of rounds that a barbarian can rage per day. A barbarian can enter rage as a free action. The total number of rounds of rage per day is renewed after resting for 8 hours, although these hours do not need to be consecutive.
While in rage, a barbarian gains a +4 morale bonus to her Strength and Constitution, as well as a +2 morale bonus on Will saves. In addition, she takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class. The increase to Constitution grants the barbarian 2 hit points per Hit Dice, but these disappear when the rage ends and are not lost first like temporary hit points. While in rage, a barbarian cannot use any Charisma-, Dexterity-, or Intelligence-based skills (except Acrobatics, Fly, Intimidate, and Ride) or any ability that requires patience or concentration.
A barbarian can end her rage as a free action and is fatigued after rage for a number of rounds equal to 2 times the number of rounds spent in the rage. A barbarian cannot enter a new rage while fatigued or exhausted but can otherwise enter rage multiple times during a single encounter or combat. If a barbarian falls unconscious, her rage immediately ends, placing her in peril of death.
Constructed Race Trait wrote:
For the purposes of effects targeting creatures by type (such as a ranger's favored enemy and bane weapons), androids count as both humanoids and constructs. Androids gain a +4 racial bonus on all saving throws against mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, and stun effects, are not subject to fatigue or exhaustion, and are immune to disease and sleep effects. Androids can never gain morale bonuses, and are immune to fear effects and all emotion-based effects
Nowhere in Rage does it ever call the state of Rage an emotional effect. It can also be seen as simply a mentally tasking trance-like state that corresponds to a sudden burst of strength. The only thing that really indicates emotion at all is the term "Rage", but nowhere mechanically is it stated that creatures immune to emotion effects cannot enter this state.
Is Rage inherently emotional? Can Android's rage?
If they can, we've unleashed some monster upon the world. Androids, while incapable of benefiting from the STR and CON bonuses, would be able to enter Rage whenever they wanted and leave it the same turn. Never experiencing the negative effects of it or of leaving it.
This means that an Android Barbarian can use their once-per-rage powers once per round. An Android Barbarian can learn the Beast Totem tree and become a thing out of Five Nights at Freddy's.
What otherwise looks like a poor choice in optimization becomes a true nightmare. A peaceable-looking droid one second, and then a monstrous beast plunging towards you the next.
Morale: A party having access to Flagbearer gets +1 to attack and damage (plus some other stuff) indefinitely (30 ft).
Competence: A party having access to Lingering Performance Inspire Courage gets +1 to attack and damage (plus some other stuff) for 3 rounds.
Untyped: A party with a Divine Domain Cleric gets +2 to their next attack roll (or their next other stuff) whenever the Cleric is the target of a Divine spell (15 ft).
Are there any other attack/damage buffs a party can drop (affecting everyone) with minimal resource expenditure that will stack with the above at level 1?
Minimal resource expenditure being that they can be expected to have remaining uses after a single combat at early levels.
- A Lingering Performance Bard would only spend 1 Bardic Performance use on a fair encounter lasting 3 rounds. They generally have over 5 uses per day, and get more each level.
- A Flagbearing Bard would spend absolutely no resources providing their Flag bonus.
From the Void School of Wizardry, is Aura of Prescience a free action to activate each round?
Quote:
Aura of Prescience (Su)
At 8th level, you can emit a 30-foot aura of void energy for a number of rounds per day equal to your wizard level. Allies within this aura gain a +2 insight bonus on ability checks, attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and skill checks. These rounds do not need to be consecutive.
It seems like its activation is like that of non-consecutive rounds of Fly, where it simply just happens. You decide that the round is one of those rounds, like activating Power Attack, rather than spending an action to make it happen.
But there's no clear interpretation since generally Supernatural Abilities without a listing are either constantly in effect (which this obviously isn't) or a standard action to activate.
For a wizard, spending a standard action each round to produce this aura is very not worth the action economy warranting Level 8 access. So it's my belief that it's intended as a Free Action to activate. However, my group is of the other school of thought.
What I've usually seen is that the GM will ask players what their marching order and positioning is whenever they're outside of a standard town map. When they trigger a random encounter from the table, the encounter is added to the grid somewhere ahead of them or isn't immediately displayed (ambush).
In the case where it isn't an ambush, where the party sees the enemies up ahead already on the map, how should the enemies be spread out?
This isn't just a matter of flavor, as may not be obvious. An encounter made to be at proper CR can be made significantly easily or harder based on the placement of enemies.
Consider that you have a group of archers at CR. Placing them behind some difficult terrain essentially grants them a free turn of extra attacks. Martials can't charge at them through difficult terrain, so only the ranged-capable characters are taking the first couple of turns.
The contrary example is that placing them all in poor positioning that invites Multikill Fireballs and Move->Cleaves.
Now, with that in mind, placing monsters in these perfect positions will put them in a CR higher than they should be and putting them in random positions may put them in a CR lower than they should be.
How do you ensure that encounter placement doesn't negatively affect the balance of the encounter?
Benefit: The barbarian gains a +1 dodge bonus to her Armor Class against melee attacks for a number of rounds equal to the barbarian's current Constitution modifier (minimum 1). This bonus increases by +1 for every 6 levels the barbarian has attained. Activating this ability is a move action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity.
Does this mean any levels the barbarian has attained (number of HD) or the number of barbarian levels attained (number of Barbarian HD)?
If acquired through Furious Guardian's Guarded Dedications, would Furious Guardian levels count towards the total?
Main Hand: +18/+13/+8/+3
Off Hand: +18/+13/+8
Natural Attacks: +18/+18/+18/+18
This would be a total of 11 attacks on a full attack.
The reason I worry that I would not get all 11 attacks is that I'm not really confident on how Unarmed Strikes work with Natural attacks like Bite and Claw.
It's my understanding that Unarmed Strikes includes any non-weapon bodily method of dealing damage, like a punch or a kick, but I don't know if this prevents me from using my natural attacks in some way. For example, using a Sword prevents me from using one of my claws.
Small Quilted Armor in a goblin or kobold game would be very strong. DR 3 versus enemy goblin arrows, spears, picks, shortswords, daggers (if they don't slash with them).
That is to say if it still protects from small piercing weapons and not tiny piercing weapons.
Now, if it does instead protect from tiny piercing weapons because it's a smaller armor now, what if it's made Large?
Wouldn't then a Giant wearing Quilted Armor suddenly increase in CR drastically against an unprepared adventuring party?
Does the special property of it apply regardless of fitted size?
Touch spells have the ability to Hold the Charge. Meaning that they can be cast ahead of time and then held onto for use whenever after without the need to speak the verbal components again or make the somatic gestures in a risky location.
This lends itself to underhanded dealings, such as assassinations (Poison, Shocking Grasp, etc) and kidnappings (Touch of Idiocy, Ghoul Touch, etc). So, this is fairly dangerous; someone can just reach over and shake your hand. BOOM you're a goner. Or are you?
Are their visual indicators that a spell's charge is being held?
If not, will it be detectable by Detect Magic? (It is neither a functioning spell or a magic item)
If not, how can you tell that someone is holding the charge on a touch spell?
Does Soothing Performance require you spend four Bardic Performance charges, or can it be activated after having been in effect by Lingering or Harmonic spell?
This makes a huge difference.
A bard at level 12 will have 26+Cha Bardic Performances, and 25+Cha spell casts.
If the Bard needs to be actively performing, Soothing Performance can only be used 6+(2+Cha)/4 times.
If the Bard does not need to be actively performing and can have the performance carried through spellcasting and lingering, the Bard only needs to spend 1 Bardic Performance charge and 1 spell to meet the 4 round requirement.
This means a Bard can effect a Mass Cure Serious Wounds at least 25+Cha times. Significantly more Soothings than before.
Another pair of questions in this same vein of thought:
- Does Harmonic Spell reset Lingering Performance? Worded differently, can casting a spell in lingering rounds lead to more lingering rounds?
- If you perform Soothing Performance for 5 rounds, does it count as having performed for 4 continuous rounds twice? Or do you have to perform for 4 distinct sets of rounds to effect Mass Cure Serious Wounds twice?
If the answers to both questions are "yes", then Soothing Performance can be used far more times than listed above. The bard would simply alternate between spellcasting and harmonic spelling in between lingers to add 50+2*Cha extra rounds of performance.
This means the Bard performs Soothing Performance for at least 150 rounds. This is at least 38 distinct sets of 4-round performances OR at least 147 overlapping sets of 4-round performances.
Pros:
Bonuses to Con and Wis, two easily neglected stats for a Rogue.
Speed is never lowered by encumbrance (carry everything, no consequences)
A plethora of defensive racial traits against Giant attacks, poisons, spells, and leg-based combat maneuvers.
Bonus to Appraise
Stonecunning
Darkvision
Cons:
Slow speed, 10 ft/round slower
Weapon Familiarity favors non-TWFable weapons (unless there's a Dwarven Shortsword out there somewhere)
No racial bonus to perception
Penalty to Charisma impacts Bluff thereby Feints
Is there anything else I'm missing?
I'm inclined to favor a Dwarven Rogue simply on the grounds of Stonecunning and the defensive racials. This makes them less likely to wane as a front-liner, pairing up with the fighter for the Flank Buddy System. But I can definitely see that -10 speed putting a damper on the FBS.
How far behind the average feasible rogue build am I if I start as Rogue, if at all?
Player A is a large Humanoid through non-magical means.
Player B casts Enlarge person on them.
Does Player A become huge?
Scenario #2:
Player A is a medium Humanoid through non-magical means and he's carrying an oversized Large weapon (taking the -4 to use it).
Player B casts Enlarge person on them.
Does Player A's weapon become huge?
All it says is that the creature is increased by a size category, and that equipment is similarly enlarged. This means that your equipment goes up in a size category, right?
In both these scenarios, Player A's weapon should be Huge, correct?
