I had an assassin to trick two PCs (a druid and an alchemist) into drinking Chon Chon Elixir. (People with poison immunity are rarely cautious about such things.)
As a result, their heads fell off and their bodies became helpless.
But the Druid used Wild Shape, and the Alchemist managed to get someone to feed him a Gaseous Form extract.
My understanding is that one polymorph effect cancels the previous one, so their heads and bodies were instantly reconnected (somehow). Would you have ruled the same?
A giant fish on 0HP swallowed a PC who was suffering from Confusion, then passed out from taking strenuous action while on 0HP. The only not-confused PC was wild-shaped into an orca.
This created a whole bunch of rules questions for me. Do you still take the same bludgeoning damage every round while you're swallowed by an unconscious enemy? Can you try to cut your way out as an 'attack nearest enemy' action while you're confused? Is it easier to cut your way out of a foe while it's unconscious?
Is it possible to rescue an ally by chewing your way in from the outside?
I'm trying to rewrite Suishen with the following goals in mind:
(1) As written, it provides unlimited protection from cold for everyone, which trivialises the entire next chapter of the AP.
(2) It can cast Air Walk with a huge duration three times a day. If anyone else in the party has any flight abilities at all, that basically means the entire party will (during a normal limited 'adventuring day') never again have to bother about terrain, ground-based traps, etc.
(3) As written, it levels up four times, when you defeat "an oni of the Five Storms" but these oni are undefined. I want to make it so it can level up more often (based on GM whim, probably giving out the first couple of increases early enough to help with Kimandatsu), and it gives interesting decisions about what new powers you want.
I'm thinking of making it so that all spells come from a single pool of charges-per-day - that way, you have to consider whether you want protection from cold, air walk, or anti-invisibility, as opposed to casually having all of them.
Is this reasonable? Is the choice of new abilities interesting and somewhat balanced?
Suishen, Guardian of the Amatatsu (Minor Artifact), +2 Defending katana
Suishen can cast one spell per day (from a shared pool of spell slots) for each level of Bond you have with it. For an Amatatsu scion, it starts with a Bond level of 4 and the first ability of each Path unlocked. Each time you increase your Bond level, you gain the next ability in the Path of your choice.
Path of Slaying:
1 Flaming (+1d6 fire damage)
2 Flaming Burst (+1d10 fire damage on crit)
3 Oni Bane
4 +3 enhancement bonus
Path of Vision:
1 Spell: Daylight
2 Spell: See Invisibility (given to wielder or one ally within 5 feet)
3 Spell: Invisibility Purge
4 Spell: True Seeing
Path of Resistance
1 Spell: Endure Elements
2 Spell: Resist Energy (cold)
3 Spell: Protection from Energy (cold or fire)
4 Spell: Resist Energy (any)
Path of Mobility:
1 Spell: Levitate (given to wielder or one ally within 5 feet)
2 Spell: Air Walk
3 +5 base speed for wielder
4 +10 base speed for wielder
I'm looking into running this campaign again for a new group. (Having gone through the work of replacing all the book 3 caravan encounters with regular encounters and so on the last time, I thought it would be easier to do this AP again than try a new one.)
One of the aspects that didn't contribute much last time was the caravan NPCs, both the big four and the various others they recruited along the way. I'd introduce them, and then they'd mostly fade into the background and get forgotten about. I could throw in an NPC ally to accompany the party from time to time, but it slowed things down, and they weren't actually needed because most of the enemies were pretty easy for four PCs to handle.
And I don't think my players ever once made an effort to start a conversation with these NPCs.
NPCs that have worked better for me in the past might have:
Intriguing mysteries - when their secrets are revealed it changes how you feel about them.
Severe psychological problems - they need someone to listen to them and give them good advice.
Conflicts that need resolving - like two people who hate each other but the party needs them to work together.
Quests for the party - "I want this matter dealt with discreetly. There might be a pair of magic boots in it for you..."
Moral ambiguity - My version of Skygni the Winter Wolf had a very... practical approach to surviving the frozen North.
Semi-planned character arcs - where they end up doing something you would never have imagined them doing early on.
Romance established early - the PCs long-suffering girlfriend follows him around on his adventures, worrying he's going to get himself killed.
A general sense that they are a little disappointed in the PC and are hard to impress - a stern parent, for example.
I don't think I need them to provide more mechanical benefits. "This person can cast a useful healing spell on you if you return to the caravan," doesn't build much of an emotional bond.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how I could modify the NPCs to make them work better for me?
People have lately been violently disagreeing with what the baseline assumptions of the game are in terms of things like the GM lying to the players because it seems like it will make things more fun.
I'd like to get an estimate of how common some of these attitudes are.
Please favorite the result or results you agree with.
(1) I would be offended if I knew a GM tried to lie to me - for example by saying he rolls all dice fairly, but actually changing a dice roll behind to a screen to avoid killing me with a critical hit.
My goal for this experiment is to create a useful resource – gathering together outstanding FAQs but also providing possible answers.
A post on this thread should consist of a question, a link to a page where it has been marked as FAQ, and a proposed answer. Try to avoid debating or hitting the FAQ button on this thread – instead go to the linked thread and discuss/FAQ it there.
As there are multiple possible answers to any FAQ, each should get its own post. Click the + button to mark your favorite answer to any given question, the one you’d like most as an official ruling. You can rate them on game balance, realism, or consistency with existing rules text – whichever is most important to you. If you don’t like any of the posted answers, post your own.
The ideal post here is one that could be copied and pasted into the official FAQs with minimal editing. (Try to resist the temptation to write sarcastic phrasings of answers you disagree with.)
It is my theory that the most popular answer is usually the best one, and a good guide for uncertain GMs in the absence of anything more definitive.
Crawling Hand is a Diminutive creature - a severed undead hand - with a Grab (and Strangle) attack that can affect Medium creatures. Would you allow a PC being grappled by one to move around or should they be held in place?
So, I'm running one of those campaigns with no magic shops, and intrinsic bonuses removing the need for magic weapons, cloaks of resistance, etc.
What magic items would you give a low-level group in such a campaign? I'm looking for the sort of flavorful things that you'd normally just sell because you don't really need them. Since there's nowhere to sell them, the cost doesn't matter - only the impact on the game.
Vote for the option(s) matching the game as you've experienced it (using the + button). If your experience has been different in different adventures, feel free to vote for multiple contradictory options.
(1) I find casters consistently make martials look weak.
There was a lot of off-topic conversation here about the RAW and RAI of using knowledge skills to know about things like distant cities. I thought I'd make a more appropriate thread.
I don't think it's worth FAQing since there isn't going to be a simple rule that can please everyone, but here are some questions for discussion:
'Know local laws, rulers and popular locations' is supposed to be a DC 10 Knowledge Local check.
Does this mean 'Know local laws, local rulers and popular local locations' or 'Know rulers (anywhere), popular locations (anywhere) and local laws'? Either way, what does 'local' mean? Local to wherever you happen to be standing? Local to wherever you call home?
(I'd recommend using 'Know local laws, local rulers and popular local locations' but treating 'local' as being an abbreviation for something along the lines of 'anywhere you've been in long enough to have taken a look around, or would reasonably be expected to have read about or heard stories about in the past'.)
How cosmopolitan do you think Pathfinder characters are? Given the existence of magic, there's no intrinsic reason it needs to be harder to go into a bookshop and read about the best places to go shopping in distant cities than it is in our own world.
What about monster knowledge skills? There are different DCs for 'Common' and 'Rare' creatures. What defines common and rare? Are they absolute values? If you're from a frozen wasteland, walruses might be common and camels rare - in your experience.
Is a GM supposed to impose modifiers to these skill rolls based on whatever seems sensible at the time?
"Flat-Footed: At the start of a battle, before you have had a
chance to act (specifically, before your first regular turn in
the initiative order), you are flat-footed. You can’t use your
Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) while flat-footed."
Situation: while GMing I like to create situations where the PCs and the enemies can talk before battle ensues. Both sides expect a fight to break out at any moment.
I was playing it that when a fight then begins, characters are flat-footed before they have acted.
My players seemed to think this shouldn't apply - both sides are fully aware of the other side and on their guard. Is there any basis for this belief in rules or table tradition?
You can choose to fight offensively when attacking in melee. If you do so, you gain a +2 bonus on all attacks in a round but take a -4 penalty to AC until the start of your next turn.
Special: If you have at least 3 ranks of acrobatics, you only take a penalty of -3 to AC while fighting offensively.
Combat Expertise
You can choose to use combat expertise offensively. You can choose to gain a +1 bonus on melee attack rolls and combat maneuver checks but suffer a -1 penalty to your Armor Class. When your base attack bonus reaches +4, and every +4 thereafter, the AC penalty increases by –1 and the attack bonus increases by +1.
You can fight offensively and use offensive Combat Expertise simultaneously; the bonuses and penalties stack.
The purpose of these rules:
It's very frustrating to fight a melee battle against an opponent who is almost impossible to hit. There are currently very few options for a PC in that situation. It may be especially beneficial to the sort of characters who have trouble hitting (monks, rogues).
It's also useful for GMs who want to provide danger without cheating. (I'm running Jade Regent at the moment. I have two PCs with AC in the high thirties, and there are numerous encounters with groups of enemies who attack at around +15.)
It also makes Combat Expertise better, for those who don't want to use it but who need it as a prerequisite for another feat.
Would these rules help your game? Are there any downsides I haven't thought of?
A sorcerer wants to use cast Transformation on his animal companion. Share Spells says he can cast personal spells on his pet but the spell uses the word 'you' a number of times and I'm trying to work out what that means here.
My interpretation of RAW is:
He must feed a potion of bull's strength to his pet as part of the casting of the spell.
The pet gains enhancement bonuses to stats and fortitude saves but the natural armour bonus doesn't stack with its inherent natural armour.
Proficiency with martial weapons won't apply to an animal.
The pet gains BAB equal to its hit dice (not to the caster's character level).
The sorcerer can still cast spells while the duration is running.
Bite damage is listed as B/S/P. Meaning it's all of those things at once and the attacker cannot choose to do one particular type?
If in my group do not read:
Suppose a PC uses a bite attack on a Black Pudding that takes no damage from slashing damage but is split into two enemies instead, what happens? Does it take the damage from the bludgeoning and split as well?
A couple of my players wanted to get living steel magic crossbow bolts, shuriken, etc. Since living steel weapons repair themselves from taking damage, they could regenerate after use. This seems overpowered to me - you could get a few +5 arrows and use them repeatedly. Does anyone allow this in their games?
If a character description says:
3/day: Dimension Door, Hideous Laughter
Can he cast them three times each or three spells a day from that list? I always assumed it was the latter, but Kikonu's suggested tactics have him teleporting, hitting the players with more spells, then teleporting again.
Similarly, if an intelligent magic item description says:
3/day: Resist Energy, Remove Paralysis
Can it cast them three times each in a day?
And this time it isn't 'should you close your eyes when fighting someone with mirror images'...
Question 1:
The spell says you can create up to 8 images. Say I cast mirror image and create four images. Then I cast it again and create three images. Do I now have seven images? Or four? Or three?
Question 2:
If a friendly cleric wants to cast a touch spell on you, can he do that without risking hitting an image? Do you have to be aware of what he's doing and reach out to touch him? What if he's cast 'status', which allows him to know the 'distance and direction' of the target?
I was looking at < this list of useful druid spells >. One of the recommended spells is Animal Growth. It looks to me like the animal must fail a Fortitude save for this spell to work. (It says 'Fortitude negates', not 'Fortitude negates (harmless)'.)
Since the animals I'd like to cast it on usually have a decent Fort save, that means I'm looking at a failure rate of around 50%. Is my interpretation of this spell correct?
How do people deal with the Commune with Nature spell, especially in the context of exploring map hexes in Kingmaker?
The spell description is pretty vague - you gain knowledge of 'as many as three' facts about the area, such as plants, minerals, people, powerful unnatural creatures.
So, should the caster have any control over which bits of information they get? Or should it be decided randomly, or on the GM's whim?
And is a piece of knowledge 'there are minerals somewhere in this region' or 'there's a group of nine bandits hiding in a cave below the great oak tree on top of the hill two miles north of here and their leader is a powerful sorcerer'?
My group (at level 8) fought a Great Cyclops in our last play session (and just barely escaped alive).
I was wondering if there could be a mistake in its combat stats? It gets 3 melee weapon attacks AND two slams. Creatures of similar shape, size and CR - like cloud giants and storm giants - get 3 weapon attacks OR two slams, which I presume to be their mighty fists. And creatures that combine natural attacks and weapon attacks normally get a secondary-attack accuracy penalty, but that didn't seem to be the case here, making me think maybe the word 'or' was accidentally omitted?
