Bast L.'s page

Any News? ETA?

Telluric Power reads:

"You channel strength from the earth beneath your feet to pummel your enemies. When making a melee Strike against a target who is standing on the same earth or stone surface as you are, you gain a circumstance bonus to the damage roll equal to the number of weapon damage dice."

Is the "standing" somewhat flavorful? Or does it not work on prone targets? What about targets without legs, like Oozes? Probably works on Oozes (stand isn't really defined, except as the action to end prone).

So, if you don't mind being a jerk who leaves acid burns everywhere, you could repeat a spell (acid splash) and energize strikes to keep up a constant damage buff on your weapon, as an exploration activity.

Acid Splash, particularly, allows targeting of objects. Didn't look carefully enough to see what else does.

It only saves you 1 action, really, but it's something, I guess.

Comparing to Eldritch Archer, which just needs 1 chance to hit, this looks a little rough.

Hmm, disintegrate = 3 chances to miss with the spell?

Of course, everything in the game is up to the GM, but the idea here is to be as non-arbitrary as possible.

So, there's a new archetype in book 2 of Agents of Edgewatch, which has a feat that adds your level in damage to strikes until the end of your next turn, with a cost of 1 action. Having seen this, my more optimizing players are trying to work it into their characters, not even in this AP. Some people have said that AP stuff is specific to that AP, and you shouldn't allow it outside of the AP. But I don't know of such a restriction (other than just tacking it on).

In the AP that gives the option, I tend to wait until players gain access, but outside, a simple addition to backstory could allow access to many of the options.

How do you all handle them? Is there any official guidance on it?

Edit: Another example is Sudden Bolt, which some say is broken, I think is fine. But it is telling that they didn't include it in the APG, like they did some feats from AoA. Maybe Secrets of Magic will have it.

So, I dunno what the deal is. The book says, "Its already-numerous attractions multiply tenfold during 3 months of jubilee, merriment, and the cross-pollination of cultures from all over Golarion."

While it also says dates are omitted to allow for downtime and such.

But 3 months is 3 months (about the amount of downtime I give in my AoA game, per book).

I was thinking of speeding up downtime, maybe making things take 1/4th as long, but I'm not really sure. If someone wants to change a class choice (not feat or skill, but druid order, or something of the sort), it takes a month of downtime normally.

How are you all planning on dealing with downtime? Leaving the rules as-is? A very long summer? Speed up downtime activities?

So, the saving throw says "Fortitude", not "Basic Fortitude" as most spells with basic saves do, while the damage section mentions a basic fortitude save.

I'm wondering, how exactly does the spell work?

Possibility 1, fort save vs effect, basic fort save vs damage:

You (the target) make an initial fort save versus the effect, if you fail the effect is on you, you're fatigued, and you make a basic fortitude save each time it would cause damage, including the initial damage, and whenever it's sustained. Whether you make any of those basic saves, the effect is still on you, so you're still fatigued.

Possibility 2, basic fort save vs effect and damage:

You (the target) make basic fort saves vs both initial effect/damage, and any time it's sustained. If you make the basic save on any round, is the effect on you still? If you crit succeed on the basic save? Does it matter if you make the save on the initial, or sustain round?

Possiblity 3, fort save vs effect and initial damage, basic save for sustain damage:

You (the target) make a fort save vs the effect and the initial damage (not sure what a non-basic save vs damage is, no effect? Crit fail, no doubling?), but make basic saves vs each sustain damage, which does not remove the effect (and thus the fatigue?).

Any thoughts? Other possibilities? I think it's possibility 1, but not entirely sure.

Hey, didn't see one up, so here it goes.

No precinct map yet, but I wanted one, so here it is. Probably not right/missing stuff. I made it before I read very much.

Precinct Map

What's with this duration? Am I missing something? Maybe my imagination is limited, but I can't see how it could possibly be useful as a 1 minute spell. Shouldn't this just be the heightened version at level 2?

Edit: only thing I can think of is dismantling manacles on you.

Heya. I'm playing in an AP, and a certain creature attacked something another party member held. Its ability mentioned what happened if it hit the object, and it made me think about objects, damage, critical hits, saves.

In the CRB, objects have no immunity to crits, that I can see, but no AC either. I remember in one game, early on, a player with a dwarf character wanted to use his axe to chop down a tree that an enemy had climbed up. I think I arbitrarily gave the tree AC 10, and used the "wood" material on page 577 (mentions tree trunk). He crit and felled the tree in one swing, which, even as a barbarian dwarf, seemed a little wild.

Are there any clear rules for this? I know they don't have general sundering rules, but attacking objects is definitely a thing (see wrecker specialized companion).

Do unattended objects have AC, and do attended objects have a different AC?

BTW, what is a wrecker companion supposed to wreck? Hazards? Some environmental thing (like the tree example)? Or can it sunder things? Golems aren't objects, they're creatures.

So, under Summoned, on page 301, it says, "If you can communicate with it, you can attempt to command it..."

Now, all summons have the minion trait (same section), and minion says you do command it, when you sustain (for summoned creatures).

So what's the deal? You can command it, or you can't, if you can't communicate with it? I would argue that minion is less specific, since all summons are minions, but not all minions are summons. But still, the minion trait specifically mentions how you command summoned creatures, as does the summoned trait, with some incompatibility between the two. Of course, "You can communicate with it" => "You can attempt to command it" doesn't necessarily mean the converse is true, but that's not how people normally speak.

Assuming you can't command it, and it just "attacks your enemies to the best of its abilities," does it know who your enemies are, and does it know that casting a spell of <summon level> will end the summoning (that is, would it try some high level attack spell, and then vanish)?

I've just been running it leniently, and letting the players control the summons, but what are the intended rules here?

Finally, what about summoning sapient creatures from the material plane, such as dragons or giants? Are they yanked out of their lairs/caves, and forced to fight to the death for you? Or are these just temporary manifestations of creature-like things? I'm imagining the players making enemies by summoning them.

"Targets you and up to 4 targets touched, either willing creatures or objects roughly the size of a creature."

What is the size of a creature in teleport? Like, is that one planet a creature? I ask, because the party currently has a purple worm tagging along, and I just have no idea what is intended here. Can the worm be teleported, or anything as large as it?

The invisible condition says that you're undetected, unless someone uses a seek action, or they're tracking your footprints in snow, or something similar.

When failing a stealth check, you're hidden (crit fail makes you observed, but that's not possible with invisible, except for non-sight precise sense).

Which is more specific? Which overrides? If you're unnoticed (starting the fight stealthed, and invisible), and you fail a stealth check, are you detected, or hidden? Do they need to take a seek action to find your square?

So, before heading into the fortress, I told the players that, arbitrarily, they can't just run away and rest after every encounter. But I don't have any justification for that. Even the ritual, which wouldn't work, isn't something they can know about ahead of time.

The mine, specifically, said players should leave, and come back, and beat them by attrition, but for the fortress, it would just be uninteresting. How do you guys handle things like that? Camping in the jungle isn't much threat, since they roll well enough to avoid diseases, and random encounters are never much concern (even using pf 1 tables, we haven't run into anything interesting). They don't run out of food or water, thanks to the druid. I don't see anything propelling them to finish the fortress' defenders quickly.

I also would prefer not having the enemies just swarm in from other rooms, because those rooms add to the encounters.

What do you all do for these situations? Have them reconstruct the golem? (his curse is pretty nasty)

Hello. I've been a customer here for a few years, and I just wanted to give some feedback from the perspective of a GM who runs games online using Roll20.

While I appreciate that Paizo sells pdfs, using the maps from them is not always trivial. A couple of things that would make it easier are: maps which end in grid lines, maps with thicker doors, larger images, and maps with a player-version toggle (or just a page with the player version).

Some of these, such as larger images, and player-version toggle, were present in the RotRL pdf, but I'm running Dead Suns now, and not only is there no player toggle, but the maps themselves are only a section of a page, and thus quite blurry when stretched out appropriately.

Larger doors make for easier dynamic lighting (thicker walls, and walls which are centered on the grid would help with this too).

Maps ending at grid lines would make lining things up easier.

Also, token images in the back for NPCs wouldn't be bad.

Thanks,
Bast

Hello. I noticed in the FAQ that everything is changed (especially starship DCs), and I was wondering if the PDF is going to be updated to reflect that.

As Paizo doesn't have online rules yet, I'm just using the book for now, and the great thing about PDFs is that they can be patched when fixes go out.

I apologize if this has been asked before, but my search didn't turn anything up.

Thanks,
Bast

Hello. I'm considering running Iron Gods, and I'm currently running Rise of the Runelords. A problem in my game is that the players are simply over-matching the content. The enemies can sometimes damage them, and even be lethal, but the players destroy everything they come across very quickly.

I'm hoping to see longer fights, where something other than "do the most damage possible, as fast as possible" is a viable strategy. Where buffs and debuffs mid-fight matter. With Iron Gods, I can't imagine disallowing Gunslingers (because of laser pistols and the like), but those touch attacks are too good. And ignoring gunslingers, other classes also have combinations for huge amounts of damage.

What can I do as GM to prevent the 1-3 round boss fights? Or is Pathfinder simply this way?

To provide some context, in RotRL I allowed the players 20 points for point buy (I didn't know it was supposed to be 15 points, and while this would make a difference, I think it wouldn't make a huge difference). I also allowed magic item crafting. I give significant downtime between chapters, but otherwise limit them a fair bit. The players are a gunslinger who ignores AC (touch attacks, a paladin who ignores DR (smite evil), a wizard who ignores surprise and always uses mirror image, and a shapechanging oracle who's new to the campaign.

The average DPR (damage per round) of each player is about 60 when they full attack or cast damage spells.