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(OR How Long is a Piece of String 2: The splicing) Ok I know there's no set answer for this but I just can't quite wrap my head around the idea of multi-day dungeon crawls. If we make all the standard assumptions about things like 4 encounters per day then how do the party not get found and stomped while they're resting? Small dungeons arn't a problem, with less than a dozen rooms you can fill them quite nicely with 3 warm up acts a BBEG and a handful of traps or just decorative rooms. City sized dungeons again probably offer a myriad of nooks and crannies that a resourceful adventuring party can hole up in with minimal chance of being discovered (although if that dungeon is full entirely of soldiers rather than a large number of non-combatants to a small number of soldiers/police as you would get in an actual city things become a little trickier) But it's that middle ground that confuses me. If an adventuring party merrily slaughters their way through the first floor of a 7 level dungeon and makes camp in a storeroom or somewhere they can barricade the door against easy entry how do they not get found or wake up to find they've either been locked into the room or a small army encamped on the threshold? A small group of searchers can go room by room in even a fairly large building in a matter of hours (and when aided by a trail of corpses, blood spatter and a sharp demarcation between the occupied and unoccupied rooms even quicker) so how does a group even spend 1 night in a dungeon safely and sucessfully? (We can leave the undead out for now, as they're (for the most part) mindless creatures its more understandable that they might not even notice the intrusion and if they are being directly controlled by a single entitiy that will slow down searches considerably as it will either have to split its attention or be much slower and more methodical)
PRD wrote: A number of evolutions grant the eidolon additional natural attacks. Natural attacks listed as primary are made using the eidolon's full base attack bonus and add the eidolon's Strength modifier on damage rolls. Natural attacks listed as secondary are made using the eidolon's base attack bonus – 5 and add 1/2 the eidolon's Strength modifier on damage rolls (if positive). If the eidolon only has a single natural attack, the attack is made using its full base attack bonus and it adds 1-1/2 times its Strength modifier on damage rolls made with that attack, regardless of the attack's type. How are people interpreting this? Is this a misprint/poor choice of words that should say full attack bonus instead of full base or does the Eidolon actually not add its Strength bonus to its BAB?Possibly it's me being pedantic but the way I read "full base attack bonus" is "base attack bonus without any penalties" rather than "base attack bonus + strength modifier + size modifier" which would be "full attack bonus". Without either the word full or base in there it would be clear but with both it's confusing.
Came across an amusing (if somewhat hypothetical) question the other night in our session. While fighting a demon with DR 10/Good our cleric summoned in a Hound Archon (Lawful Good). Our Barbarian, irked somewhat at the reduced damage his sword was doing asked the question; if he had the feat that lets him pick up other creatures and use them as weapons (I forget which feat it is) would picking up the Hound Archon and hitting the demon with it bypass the DR? Thoughts?
There seems to be a substantial number of people indicating that you can cast cantrips/orisons an infinite number of times a day, where exactly does it say this in the CRB (or any other book for that matter?) The PRD says
Quote: Cantrips: Wizards can prepare a number of cantrips, or 0-level spells, each day, as noted on Table: Wizard under “Spells per Day.” These spells are cast like any other spell, but they are not expended when cast and may be used again. A wizard can prepare a cantrip from a prohibited school, but it uses up two of his available slots (see below). Personally I took this to read that the spell itself is not expended (ie wiped from his mind for the day) but the wizard is still limited by his spells per day, so if a level 1 wizard prepares Detect Magic, Prestigiditation and Acid Splash he can cast each spell once or any of them up to 3 times but after that he's out of level 0 slots. Is there something to dispute this somewhere?
I'm sure this has been debated back and forth before (so if anybody can point me to that thread i'd be grateful as I can't find it) but now that the Words of Power system has been out for a while what are the pros and cons of it compared to regular casting? From what I can see it does offer a reasonable amount of versatility, especially for spontanious blaster casters in that they can adapt their magic to a greater degree to suit what they're facing, facing cold immune mobs? just swap out the cold word for an acid word, prepared casters can do the same but only to th extent that they can read their GMs mind and guess what they're likely to face. But they seem to offer a significant number of disadvantages to the caster, all the targetting words have greatly reduced ranges if you don't use the boost word which bumps the spell level up dramatically, I believe the standard example is fireball vs 'burst fire blast' where without boosting the wordspell has a close range and a 10ft radius instead of a long range and a 20ft radius, an exact match isnt possible but to get the 20ft radius you have to boost the spell by 2 levels to spell level 5 and to get the long range (and a 40ft burst) you have to boost by 4 levels to spell level 7 (which is a fairly steep cost to do 10d6 of damage at 13th/14th level) Some word spells lose damage but gain versatility, the word spark only does 1d4 damage compared to the nominally similar shocking grasp which does 1d6 but can be used as a ranged touch attack not just a melee one on the other hand it doesn't get the +3 hit bonus for touching metal armour. Or vice versa, the word force bolt (the closest equivalent to magic missile) begins life one level higher than MM at level 2 does more damage at first as it reaches its maximum of 5d4 dmg at caster level 5 while MM does (effectively) 3d4+3, evens out in overall damage by level 7 and loses ground by level 9 and loses the ability to target multiple creatures (the word only says that it acts like MM for the purposes of spells that negate or absorb force effects) Not to mention the fact that there are just no words that duplicate or even come close to duplicating certain spells. TL:DR version What are the pros and cons of Words of Power, as far as I can see Pros:
Cons
Either/Or
This Link raises some interesting ideas about miniature production. In a few years (or now if you've got the cash to spend) anybody with a 3d printer should be able to download a pattern from the internet (or create one themselves if they're of an artistic nature) and print out a squad of custom goblins for their next campaign or allow each hero to have a custom built avatar in a matter of minutes. Currently only available in 1 or 2 colours but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they release ones that are easily paintable or can even be printed in full colour. |